Source: Fincentric Corporation
Fincentric Corporation, a global provider of core banking and customer value management software, today announced that ING Canada has chosen Fincentric's Wealthview UnisonTM solution.
The platform consolidates and synchronizes customer information from disparate systems to help financial institutions better deliver superior customer service and improve customer experience.
Approximately 500 independent insurance brokers and financial advisors associated with ING across Canada will use the system initially. Over the next three years, that number will grow to more than 2,500. Implementation of the platform is expected to be completed in Q1 2005.
"Fincentric's technology complements our business strategy of pursuing an innovative customer-focused approach. It provides us with a simple product delivery plan that gets to the heart of our business and customer service objectives," said Alister Campbell, ING's senior vice president, Marketing and Communications. "By consolidating data into a single platform, Wealthview Unison will enable our brokers and financial planners to better understand and address customers' financial needs."
Wealthview Unison is a unique data consolidation platform that streamlines the collection, reconciliation, and real-time presentment of customer information from numerous unconnected systems. It delivers one complete, accurate picture of each customer's financial holdings to assist sales and service representatives in the management and building of long-term customer relationships. Unlike the complexities associated with implementing middleware or building point-to-point connections, Wealthview Unison focuses on the one-way flow of information, which makes it easier and significantly less costly to implement than other systems.
"Financial institutions hold vast amounts of valuable customer data that is spread across numerous transaction and information systems. Sales and service personnel have to search across these systems when they are either preparing for, or dealing with customer interactions. This often results in lost productivity, missed sales opportunities and compromised quality of service," said Fincentric's product manager of Wealthview Unison, Steve Pentin. "Wealthview Unison removes these challenges for the employees who have daily interaction and the most impact with customers. They can spend more time assessing the needs of the customer and finding ways to help them, instead of seeking and gathering information that should be readily available."
According to Kathleen Khirallah, senior analyst in the Retail Banking practice at TowerGroup, a leading advisory research and consulting firm for the financial services industry, an effective overall CRM strategy requires the consolidation of customer data into a single view. "Maximizing the value of existing customer data and turning it into actionable information is an essential first step for financial services institutions in improving customer relationships and building customer loyalty."
"More and more financial services organizations, like ING Canada, are thinking out-of-the-box when it comes to choosing customer relationship-specific technology. Instead of jumping on the CRM bandwagon, many are really focusing on what the objective is and how technology can fit with their business model-not the other way around," said Alice Laberge, Fincentric's president and CEO. "Knowing your customers is pivotal to having long-term profitable customer relationships but getting that knowledge is half the battle. Wealthview Unison is for financial services organizations who want to generate additional value from the wealth of customer information they already have."