DTCC Insurance & Retirement Services (I&RS) announced today the release of a new information service designed for insurance carriers and broker/dealers selling annuity products.
A powerful, innovative online information solution, the Analytic Reporting Service for Annuities leverages data aggregated from DTCC's daily processing of annuity transactions to deliver anytime, anywhere access to the insight and intelligence that firms need to support key decisions about sales, sales management, marketing and advertising, and product offerings.
"DTCC is at the heart of the insurance industry, connecting a growing community of over 400 firms including insurance carriers, distributors that market insurance products, and the technology vendors that offer services enabling companies to connect," said Adam Bryan, Managing Director, I&RS. "We process approximately 150 million annuity transactions each month, which means we have a tremendous amount of industry information and market intelligence in our own systems that can be used to help our customers manage and grow their business. By making certain data transparent to our clients with this new Analytic Reporting Service, we are able to provide a whole new view of the transactions they process through DTCC."
"The Analytic Reporting Service will provide us with a new view of the transactions we process through DTCC, and we see the great potential for it to turn those transactions into valuable information we can effectively use to better understand our business, trends and new opportunities," said Scott Wagner, Insurance Business and Data Analyst, Risk Product Management, Waddell & Reed, Inc. "We believe this service could be a pivotal and much-needed solution to help us manage and grow our businesses."
Information and Intelligence
Developed with the active input of an advisory group of member firms, the Analytic Reporting Service for Annuities was piloted in late 2010 by the advisory group, which provided I&RS with feedback about how this data should be used, and what kinds of information should be presented.
The Analytic Reporting Service for Annuuities features a Web-based interface presenting customizable and searchable views into trends in inflows, outflows and net flows; analysis by product, carrier, distributor, agent and investor; and the option to create custom market segments. The service aggregates the millions of daily annuity transactions submitted to DTCC to provide dealers and carriers with information about their sales and relationships, such as:
• Cash flows by product, carrier and broker/dealer
• Market shares
• Fastest growing products
• Fastest growing client types, and
• Detailed trends by carrier, distributor, product, ZIP code and more.
Customers can also compare information and trends from their own business with the aggregated data of all participants. This will help firms understand similarities and differences, and identify further opportunities.
"It's a case study in making data smarter, aggregating millions of individual transactions to visualize market activity and relationships, and deliver actionable information through an online solution," said Andrew Blumberg, who is leading the initiative for DTCC.
As just one example of this actionable information that is important to the industry, according to data supplied by the Analytic Reporting Service, annuity inflows increased by more than 90% over the past year. Outflows increased at a slower pace, resulting in a strong increase in net cash flows. Over the past year net flows more than doubled, increasing by 140%. This information is derived from the millions of individual annuity transactions that DTCC processes for insurance carriers and broker/dealers.
The Analytic Reporting Service is a service offering of National Securities Clearing Corporation ("NSCC"), a clearing agency registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and wholly-owned subsidiary of DTCC.