The new services will be capable of cutting new business and servicing costs by 25% - an annual cost saving of up to £1.25 billion*.
Marlborough Stirling has so far reached agreement with AXA, Friends Provident, Norwich Union, Scottish Equitable and Standard Life to participate in the initiative, which is open to all product providers and intermediaries. These providers have signed contracts for a combined value of £10m - £15m. These contracts relate to future usage of the Exweb portal, which is operated by Marlborough Stirling’s subsidiary company The Exchange.
To ensure the e-commerce services meet the needs of intermediaries, 12 major distributor firms are involved in the initiative, including Bankhall, Bradford & Bingley, Inter-Alliance, SIFA, SimplyBiz, Tenet and Woolwich Independent Financial Advisory Services.
The initiative will deliver a set of e-commerce services that are built on open industry standards and made available to the entire industry, a challenge identified by Ron Sandler in his review of the medium and long-term savings in the UK. The services will be designed to help companies achieve two main objectives that are essential to the future competitiveness of the intermediary sector:
1. Reduce the cost of transacting new business
2. Increase the efficiency of servicing existing business
Meeting these two objectives will benefit product providers, advisers and consumers.
- Product providers will be able to offer more efficient service at reduced costs.
- Advisers will have more time to focus on generating new business and servicing existing clients.
- Consumers will benefit from better service and the ability of providers to offer good value products profitably.
The new services being developed are:
- Enhanced electronic new business processing, including application tracking and pipeline reporting
- Electronic policy valuations
- Portfolio aggregation, providing a single view of clients’ personal and policy details
- Single password and entry point to all participating product provider extranets
The services will build on the existing Exweb technology that is already used by and familiar to the majority of IFA firms. Marlborough Stirling is making a major investment in this infrastructure to ensure it is scaleable and robust enough to handle the anticipated increase in activity levels. The services will be made available to IFAs via:
- Exweb Gold, the next generation of the Exweb portal
- Officeweb, The Exchange’s IFA back office system
- Existing IFA back office systems
Sue Summers, managing director of The Exchange, comments:
“This initiative to create a comprehensive industry utility is built around a three way partnership between intermediaries, product providers and The Exchange. This co-operation is rarely seen in the financial services market but is the only realistic way the industry can develop a set of e-commerce services that deliver practical benefits all parties. Marlborough Stirling is totally committed to this project and is investing significant financial and business resources in it.”
Simon Hudson, chief executive officer at Tenet, comments:
“It is essential that the intermediary sector increases its use of e-commerce for both transactions and client servicing. But to do this the technology and services must meet the needs of intermediary firms. This initiative is designed specifically to ensure the needs of both intermediaries and providers are factored into the development of a range of services that will facilitate increased use of e-commerce.”
