Finetre - a division of Ebix, (NASDAQ:EBIX) - announced today BancorpSouth's agreement to deploy Finetre's industry-leading AnnuityNet Platform to its advisors as part of the firm's efforts to provide state-of-the-art annuity sales and suitability compliance reporting.
The implementation will be overseen by Landmark Technology Partners.
Finetre provides Web-based annuity and life insurance automation platforms known as AnnuityNet and LifeSpeed. The platforms operate under a SaaS (Software as a Service) business model and enable annuity and life insurance distributors to automate the processing of annuity and life insurance transactions. Finetre's client base includes major US wirehouse broker/dealers, clearing firms, and insurance carriers.
BancorpSouth, a leading financial holding company in the south-central US, is well-known for its rapid expansion of both the firm's regional footprint and provision of services. The firm explored annuity sales management solutions and chose Finetre for its industry expertise and long history of superior technology deployments. The AnnuityNet implementation is expected to be completed quickly and be in production March 2008.
"BancorpSouth's goal is to gain considerable advantages in sales efficiency, compliance, and business control of our annuity operations," said Thomas Howard, president of BancorpSouth Investment Services, Inc. "Finetre's reliability, low error rates, and commitment to the financial services industry impressed us. We are confident that our use of AnnuityNet can help us better serve our clients by putting best-of-breed annuity processing and suitability tools in the hands of our Insurance Representatives," said Tom Murry, managing director of BancorpSouth Insurance Services, Inc.
The AnnuityNet implementation will be overseen by Landmark, a Massachusetts-based technology firm providing systems consulting support to BancorpSouth. Landmark, which provides Sales and Process Automation, Account Aggregation and Compliance and reporting software to more than ten regional US banks through its BankBroker product, views Finetre's AnnuityNet as a key value-added service that will help its clients expand their business through state-of-the-art annuity sales and suitability compliance reporting.
"AnnuityNet is a natural fit with our Gateway technology," said Bruce Graham, executive director for Landmark. "AnnuityNet will augment the many electronic account processing capabilities that we currently provide to banks, broker/dealers, and clearing firms."
"We are extremely pleased that BancorpSouth and Landmark have chosen us," said Steve Dunlap, president of Finetre. "We expect our relationship with them to further expand our support of the banking industry, which is an important part of the collective financial services market that we service."