Focus Solutions says the five year contract, worth £400k, will help kick-start electronic trading in the IFA community.

"It has highlighted that collaboration is not only essential between IFAs and product providers, but also between technology suppliers to ensure a consistent platform for electronic trading," says John Streets, chief executive, Focus Solutions.

Patrick Gale, CEO, Misys IFA Services, adds: "As goal:technology is used by the leading product providers, We will be able to capitalise on the electronic products already available and roll out new ones to our IFA network quickly and cost effectively."

Misys' mi-solution will enable its 7000 IFAs to re-use customer data to pre-populate new business applications and submit applications to the product provider via the AssureWeb IFA portal.

The system, which will be supported by eight major life and pensions providers, is due to be rolled out from December 2002 onwards.

Seperately, Focus has won its first cross-border licensing agreement through a £200,000 deal with Skandia to automate investment applications across its extranets throughout Scandinavia and the UK.

Focus' goal:technology will be used by Skandia to build its investment applications in Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish. Skandia expects to use the package to build applications for use right across its European operations during 2003, via its European network of extranets.

Skandia began work with Focus in February 2002 and has already used goal:technology to build, deploy and process investment bond applications coming in from UK-based IFAs via Skandia UK’s extranet.

Anthony Scammell, senior ecommerce manager, Skandia Life, comments: "Skandia was quick to see the benefits of automating some of its new business processes in the UK and it now makes sense to realise these benefits across Skandia's International Division. Using goal:technology in our Scandinavian extranets as well as the UK site will also give us a consistent technology platform across our European operations."