Source: Vertex Financial Services
Vertex Financial Services, parent group of leading technology suppliers 1st and The Exchange, today announced that Wesleyan Assurance Society has selected its integrated, straight-through-processing (STP) technology solution to support the future growth of the mutual insurer.
As the first live implementation of 1st's new Adviser Evolution technology, built using Microsoft's .NET 2.0 platform, the Wesleyan STP solution is set to be the most advanced technological implementation made to date in the adviser marketplace. To complement these developments by 1st and The Exchange, Wesleyan IT has developed new functionality on its policy administration system to enable STP of new business for its own manufactured products. Wesleyan is a major UK-based mutual insurance group which specialises in providing tailored financial advice to doctors, dentists, and teachers.
David Child, managing director of Vertex Life, Pensions & Distribution comments: "We are delighted to conclude another major contract for our new STP solution with Wesleyan - a company which has already won awards and accolade for its commitment to the best standards of technology usage in a provider firm. The solution which they have selected combines not just the efficiencies of the 1st back office solution and our Exweb portal e-services, but significantly the really impressive new Adviser Evolution product, which 1st has developed over the past few years.
Steve Deutsch, Wesleyan director of operations, comments: "As part of our ideal solution, we were looking to deploy a radically enhanced sales support software package to augment our adviser sales process. The initial focus of the project was to support the field based financial consultants but the solution will work across multiple distribution channels. The key driver behind the project is to increase the efficiency of the financial consultant to allow them more time to give advice whilst ensuring business written remains fully compliant with our very high standards and quality measures. After an extensive review of the market, 1st was initially selected to help us refine our sales process and wire-frame how it could look using the latest technology. Following the integration of 1st with The Exchange we then realiseded the tremendous additional benefits which the combined STP solution would provide, with seamless use of client data from the back office through e-submission and beyond - all integrated with the really innovative functionality which Adviser Evolution delivers. This fitted very well with our Internal Transformation strategy, designed to improve our new business and customer service processes."
The Vertex STP technology solution for Wesleyan will be the first full implementation of 1st's new smart-client Adviser Evolution technology and will be deployed on the latest tablet PCs to support a very familiar and easy to use sales process replacing fully the dependence on paper. The technology, believed to be the first implementation of Microsoft's new smart-client framework in UK financial services, is a flagship development for Microsoft.
Nigel Turner, financial services partner manager, Microsoft comments: "The combination of 1st and the Exchange's technology services in the integrated STP solution are probably one of our leading UK-based financial software developments and this technology we believe will help to revolutionise the way financial services is done."