DTCC News Roundup
DTCC to Add Finetre as InsurExpressSM Partner
DTCC and Finetre Corporation recently announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding to integrate Finetre’s AnnuityNet and LifeNet technologies as a key front-end platform for DTCC’s InsurExpress solution.
InsurExpress offers distributors and insurance carriers an automated, end-to-end process for streamlining the sale, processing, and servicing of life insurance and annuity products, including forms completion, securing of signatures, medical information collection, and policy issuance.
Finetre’s AnnuityNet platform provides compliance workflow management and oversight, suitability, and reporting. The platform also increases back-office efficiency by providing and correctly filling out all forms, curtailing errors, and virtually eliminating “not in good order” applications. Finetre’s LifeNet platform provides similar automated processing services but for life insurance products. (From DTCC Press Release, Dec. 6, 2005.)
DTCC Earns High Marks in Customer Satisfaction
For the second year in a row, DTCC customers surveyed in 2005 said their overall satisfaction with the company was at world-class levels.
Some 3,500 customers were solicited for the survey, with 21% responding. According to The Melior Group, a market research group that conducted the study for DTCC, this response rate was high by industry standards.
According to the survey, 89% of the respondents said they were satisfied overall with DTCC, comparable to the 90% rating DTCC achieved in 2004. A world-class rating is considered to be 80%. The Melior Group also noted in its report that at such high levels as this, “it is difficult to produce consistent results. This is an achievement.” (From @dtcc Newsletter, Nov. 2005.)
DTCC to Reengineer Asset Services Systems
DTCC is teaming with Tata Consultancy Services to reengineer the systems used by DTCC’s depository subsidiary for securities underwriting and corporate actions processing for the U.S. financial services industry.
The initiative will create a single new platform, replacing more than 60 separate underwriting and corporate actions legacy systems. The integrated platform will streamline processing, generate further efficiencies, reduce costs and provide greater flexibility — dramatically transforming how these systems manage and process information.
The new platform, which will be rolled out in phases over a three-year period starting this year, will be capable of handling increasingly sophisticated types of securities — both U.S. and global — supporting an array of new asset servicing requirements and complex corporate actions, processing increasing volumes and allowing DTCC to support international messaging standards. (From DTCC Press Release, Nov. 15, 2005. See also www.dtcc.com/reengineering for more information.)
“No-More-Paper” Drive Hits Stride in 2005
The financial services industry moved closer in 2005 to its longstanding goal of “dematerialization,” or eliminating paper, including paper certificates, from the securities processing cycle.
Over the past 12 months, for example, the number of certificates held in the vaults of DTCC’s subsidiary, The Depository Trust Company, declined more than 12%, from 4 million in November 2004 to 3.5 million in November 2005.
Paper stock certificates cost companies, investors, banks, and brokers hundreds of millions of dollars each year to print, register, ship, examine, file, and protect. The SIA estimates the annual cost of handling paper stock certificates to be $250 million or more.
Contributing to the reduction of paper securities includes passage of landmark legislation in 2005 updating state securities laws, the endorsement by major exchanges of electronic listing requirements, and the expansion of several DTCC programs that eliminate paper stock certificates and attachments. (From @dtcc Newsletter, Dec. 2005. See also www.dtcc.com/nomorepaper for more information.)