Exweb Gold is already used by over 20,000 IFAs. Exweb Gold continues The Exchange’s commitment to deliver considerable time and cost savings to IFAs as well as enabling the uptake of electronic transactions in the intermediary sector.
SimplyBiz, the IFA support services group founded by Ken Davy, is the first major IFA group to sign up to Exweb Gold and will be promoting it as a recommended service for its 800 member firms with around 1,600 advisers.
Exweb Gold includes all existing Exweb services, plus additional exclusive features:
In-force contract management - the client database that is now incorporated within Exweb has been upgraded for Exweb Gold to include contract information and enable a single view of each client’s policies, including details of the funds attached to each contract.
Aggregated real-time policy valuations for pensions and bonds - electronic links have been established with leading product providers to deliver real-time valuations for Pensions and Bonds.
Supplemental price feed valuations for non-supported policies - Exweb Gold's aggregated policy valuation capability covers all major asset classes likely to be held by intermediaries' clients. In addition, the market-leading price feed from Financial Express is integrated within Exweb Gold enabling daily pricing of many other key asset classes such as unit trusts (including PEPs and ISAs) and individual shares and bonds. Finally, a manual update feature is available for assets where electronic updates are not available.
Single access point for multiple providers - Exweb Gold supports Unipass digital certificates, enabling access to multiple providers simultaneously for policy valuations and links to provider systems without having to log in and out of individual provider extranets.
Flexible client and IFA reports - all a client’s submitted applications and in-force policy valuation information can easily be printed as a financial statement, which can also be exported as a data file for tailoring by the intermediary if required.
These extensions to Exweb Gold's client servicing capabilities, when combined with the existing services for research, quote and buy, enable IFAs to develop and expand relationships with existing customers as well as generating business from new clients. In particular, Exweb Gold can facilitate the regular client reviews that are an integral part of a service led business model, which is increasingly the focus of many IFAs.
Friends Provident and Standard Life are the first two product providers to deliver real-time valuations via Exweb Gold. Prudential is expected to join the service in Q1 with AXA, Legal & General, Norwich Union, Scottish Equitable, Scottish Widows and Skandia going live later in the year.
To reflect this rollout The Exchange is offering a special introductory rate. IFAs that sign up to Exweb Gold before 31st January 2005 will only pay the basic Exweb license of £14 per month until 31st March 2005 and will then receive a discounted rate of £25 per month until the end of 2005.
IFAs that sign up before the end of March 2005 will only pay £25 per month until the end of 2005. The standard price for Exweb Gold is £35 per month and, as with the existing Exweb service, discounts are available for multiple licenses.
David Child, managing director at The Exchange, comments:
“Exweb Gold has been created to help intermediaries develop and maintain profitable client relationships. It can streamline the process of gathering a client’s policy information for regular client reviews hence improving client service and reducing administration costs. By delivering e-commerce services that help client servicing Exweb Gold is ideally placed to drive up the usage of electronic services across the board.”
Ken Davy, chairman of SimplyBiz, comments:
“We believe Exweb Gold is going to help our members deliver an even better service to their clients in less time and at less cost than current methods. The ability to access aggregated client servicing data, particularly aggregations, from multiple providers from one source is something IFAs have wanted for a long time. Our members will save time and money with each valuation via Exweb Gold making it a very cost effective client management service.”
Billy Burnside, sales and e-commerce manager at Standard Life, comments:
“We are delighted to be one of the first providers to give IFAs product valuations via Exweb Gold. Standard Life's range of pension and investment bond products will be made available across Exweb Gold, with other products to follow in due course. A portal service that can aggregate valuations will add tremendous value to the IFA sector, and Exweb Gold is set to increase significantly the use of e-commerce.”
To support the launch of Exweb Gold The Exchange will be holding a number of free roadshows throughout the UK from the end of January through to March. IFAs will be able to see Exweb Gold in action and speak to The Exchange team about the benefits it can deliver to their business
