During this year, Norwich Union has conducted a detailed and comprehensive review of the possible providers in the market and as a result has selected and now signed agreements with IFDS.

As a result of the agreement, all Norwich Union's collective investment administration, customer and intermediary call centre functions will be transferred to IFDS at a date to be finalised in 2009. At that point the Norwich Union business will migrate onto IFDS' FAST administration platform.

Cathryn Riley, Chief Operating Officer, Norwich Union Life said: "We continue to see collective investments as an important area of future profitable growth. It is important that we have a low cost scalable platform to help us achieve this. IFDS are specialists in this particular area and they offer a robust model which will help to deliver economies of scale and cost efficiencies in our operation which will ultimately enable us to deliver further improvements in service."

Simon Hudson-Lund, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "We are delighted to have secured this deal with Norwich Union to provide our market leading administration and customer services to Norwich Union and its customers and eagerly anticipate the commencement of those services upon transfer of the functions in 2009. At IFDS we are committed to providing our clients with the highest quality administration services and customer support. Norwich Union's decision to outsource to IFDS is testimony that we are the leading provider of such services."

Separately, International Financial Data Services (IFDS), the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street Corporation and DST Systems, Inc., announced today that it has reached agreement with M&G to extend its contract for retail administration services to 2016.

William Nott, Chief Executive, M&G Securities, commented: "M&G has had a very successful relationship with IFDS over the past five years and today's proposals
strengthen this further. These proposals with IFDS effectively retain the same Customer Relations team to service M&G's customers, but under a more cost efficient structure, and ensure the same high quality service is maintained."

Simon Hudson-Lund, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "We are extremely pleased that M&G wishes to not only extend our successful relationship but to expand the scope as well. The combined skills of the M&G and IFDS contact centres will further reinforce the high quality customer service and experience we consistently provide to our clients."