VERTEX AND MARLBOROUGH STIRLING UNITE TO CREATE MAJOR BPO PLAYER FOR THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY
Andy Hunt, previously Sales & Marketing Director for Vertex, has been named Managing Director of Marlborough Stirling Vertex. The acquisition creates a company hoping to become a major player in the fast growing BPO marketplace within financial services.
Andy Hunt, newly appointed Managing Director of Marlborough Stirling, comments: “The appetite for outsourcing among financial services companies is growing fast, fuelled by intensifying cost pressures and competition. The coming together of Vertex and Marlborough Stirling creates the only player able to offer the broad combination of technology and outsourcing capability needed to manage open and closed book administration and new business acquisition within both the life & pensions and mortgages markets. Marlborough Stirling’s technology and financial services market experience, coupled with Vertex’s physical resource and track record in winning and running large scale BPO contracts, will ensure our ability to gain market share.”
The fims says the Marlborough Stirling’s Lamda, Optimus and Omiga technology platforms are recognised as best of breed solutions within the life & pensions and mortgage markets, and are currently in use among many of the UK’s leading providers.
The capabilities of both are enhanced by Exweb (The Exchange), Marlborough Stirling’s online trading portal, which gives over 21,000 of the UK’s Independent Financial Advisers direct access to life, pension and investment products from all of the UK’s leading product providers.
“The Exchange has allowed Marlborough Stirling to lead the field in the development of straight-through-processing (STP); a new way of conducting business within financial services that allows each step of the sales and approval process – from quotation through to acceptance - to be conducted online,” explains Andy. “Combining Exweb with the Lamda technology platform within an outsourced environment allows this on-line capability to be extended to long term policy administration as well as new business, bringing substantive operational efficiencies and cost savings, as well as improving service to customers. The average turnaround time for new policies, for example, is reduced from several weeks to a matter of days.
“BPO deals within financial services are growing in size and require an increasingly complex combination of infrastructure, technology and transformational expertise. “There are few players in the UK with the appetite or experience to operate at this level. Vertex has a proven capability to manage multi-year deals of up to £500 million. At the same time, our heritage in customer service, unusual among BPO players currently operating within financial services, means we have a unique appreciation of the need to balance operating costs with service quality. This is vital in an environment where reduced policy charges and poor stock market performance are reducing providers’ margins while, at the same time, customer service expectations are increasing in a more complex and competitive market.”
Marlborough Stirling becomes the Financial Services Division of Vertex alongside Vertex’s other two divisions, which manage the company’s BPO contracts within the utilities, commercial and public sectors. The company’s Life & Pensions and Mortgages divisions are expected to adopt the Vertex name and brand over the medium term. The Exchange will continue to operate under its own name. Marlborough Stirling will continue to provide software and technology services to the financial services industry, in addition to the BPO services it will forge within Vertex. Vertex remains committed to sustained investment to maintain the company’s best-of-breed technologies within The Exchange, Life & pensions and mortgages and to maintain and grow its traditional client base.
David Power, Managing Director, Life & Pensions, Marlborough Stirling, comments; “Marlborough Stirling has long recognised that our software and technologies businesses were well placed to thrive but that, in the life & pensions market in particular, the biggest new growth opportunity lay in the expanding market for outsourced services. “Successful outsourcing projects with companies such as Sun Life Financial of Canada (UK) and Royal Liver demonstrate that we have the expertise needed to succeed in BPO but, in Vertex, we have found a partner whose operational scale, transformational expertise and financial resources will accelerate our expansion in this fast growing arena.”
According to specialist analyst firm, Nelson Hall, the market for BPO services within life and pensions will grow at a CAGR of 25% to reach £560 million by 2007. The BPO market within mortgages is expected to experience a similar upward trend, with a CAGR of 18.5%, to reach £466.5 million by 2008.
The Managing Directors of Marlborough Stirling’s three business units, Life & Pensions (David Power), Mortgages (David Edwards) and The Exchange (David Child), will report directly to Andy Hunt as members of a newly created Divisional Executive. The Divisional Executive replaces the previous plc board, which was dissolved following the acquisition.
