Optial signs Exeter Friendly Society

Exeter Friendly has chosen Optial's OpRisk on Demand/SaaS deployment option of the Optial SmartStart pre-configured system. The system is hosted by Optial in a secure data centre delivering a low cost, rapid deployment solution which will be implemented over the next few weeks. The system will have a broad functional scope that includes incident capture/management, risk registers, operational risk self-assessments, key risk indicators, key performance indicators, internal control monitoring and internal audit functionality.

The increased regulatory focus from the FSA, higher policy holders' expectations and Solvency II on the horizon are all pointing to the need for improved risk management. Optial provides a proven platform to support strong risk management and compliance with audit assurance, all integrated with the organisation's business as usual processes, as required by regulation.

Paul Austin, Finance Director of Exeter Friendly said, "Our intention is make our operational risk management framework more efficient and robust by mapping and automating the processes around the risk registers, risk reviews and compliance monitoring, linking all of these together with the audit function."

"The key aspects for us in our decision to purchase Optial were the rich functionality, flexibility and proven workflow of the system and that the system can support our immediate needs out of the box. Additionally, the SaaS deployment enables us to implement the system in very short space of time, with no IT involvement and at minimal cost".

"Optial SmartStart has been packaged and prepared for the Insurance industry to enable such rapid deployments with rich functionality available out of the box, yet delivering all of the flexibility required for future change. I am delighted to add Exeter Friendly to our customer base" said Chris O'Brien, CEO of Optial.