According to a survey in the life, pensions and mortgage market, 58% of organisations believe depolarisation to be a real opportunity for their organisation in terms of maximising sales, whilst 33% took the view that depolarisation created a real challenge in terms of distribution.
The survey was conducted by Focus Business Solutions at their industry event, held in Edinburgh at the end of June, entitled ‘e-commerce solutions for effective distribution – getting your strategy right’
Since the rules for the new depolarised world were announced in December 2004 by the FSA , there have been a number of high profile announcements by leading players in the market with regard to the creation of multi-tie organisations. 58% of the organisations surveyed were either in the process of sourcing or had already implemented an e-commerce solution to support their new sales process, emphasizing the importance placed on technology for the success of these new distribution structures.
‘Ease of use’, ‘Reliability’ and ‘Flexibility’ were named as the key requirements for a new multi-tie solution with the key benefit expected to be ‘to speed up the sales process’ followed by ‘the ability to launch new products to market faster’.
Nigel Smith, Director of Propositions for Focus Business Solutions commented: “The fact that the majority of organisations have already changed their distribution strategy within a three month period, since depolarisation came into play on 1 April 2005, is a very positive message for the industry and confirms that the market sees depolarisation as a serious opportunity.
"Organisations now need to ensure that the technology they employ is not only quick to build and deploy to take full advantage of the depolarisation opportunity, but is also flexible enough to embrace future market opportunities.”
