Looking Ahead: Visions 2006
For Insurance Services, 2006 will be “The Year of the Existing Customer.”
“Insurance Services has always been customer- and industry-driven, and we’ll be sharpening our focus this year,” said John Ziambras, managing director, Insurance Services. “We’ll continue to reach out to key customers, business partners, and industry organizations and seek new ways to work together to achieve our shared vision of straight-through processing for the industry.”
Insurance Services, a service offering of National Securities Clearing Corporation, a DTCC subsidiary, will focus on the following key areas in 2006, notes Ziambras:
• A more robust customer service infrastructure — to accommodate recent large increases in customers and transaction volume. Among other things, this initiative includes reorganizing Insurance Services’ relationship management team to help customers make the most of their automation investments. In particular, the team will work with carrier and broker/dealer customers to identify and act on opportunities to maximize trading relationships and implement additional Insurance Services solutions.
“Customers adopt our services to improve operational efficiencies and reduce cost, but they may not be taking full advantage of that investment,” said Lana Macumber, director of Relationship Management, Insurance Services. “In many cases, carriers and distributors who are mutual trading partners have implemented the same solutions, but are not yet trading information with one another. Adding new trading relationships requires minimal time and expense and offers customers a quick and easy way to maximize their investment return.”
• Automation of annuity and life insurance processing — especially in electronic order-entry. Insurance Services expects 2006 to be a breakout year for order-entry implementations, as existing solution providers gain industry traction and new companies emerge with solutions that help grow the market and further drive industry acceptance and use.
One area where Insurance Services will be concentrating on its InsurExpressSM solution, a new service that offers distributors and insurance carriers an automated, end-to-end process for streamlining the sale, servicing, and processing of life insurance and annuity products. Insurance Services is currently piloting InsurExpress among six carriers and distributors: Genworth Financial, AIG American General, Reliaster Life, H&R Block, Morgan Keegan, and Piper Jaffray. It intends to expand the program this year to encompass multiple financial advisers in various geographical locations, together with an expanded group of services and insurance carriers.
“We took a big step forward with InsurExpress last year through our new relationship with Finetre,” said Ziambras. “A well-established provider of order-entry technology, Finetre is the first of what we envision will be a group of strategic partners that will provide front-end connectivity to InsurExpress.” (See DTCC News Roundup.)
• Providing industry-defined compliance solutions — to meet customer needs in an ever-changing regulatory climate. Insurance Services maintains a broad portfolio of automated solutions well suited to regulatory compliance. These services — specifically Financial Activity Reporting, Positions & Valuations, Applications & Subsequent Premiums, and Licensing & Appointments — provide insurance carriers and distributors with a complement of high-value tools to manage regulatory demands driven by mandates such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and USA PATRIOT Act.
In the coming year, Insurance Services will add to its compliance services with a new solution: Fund Transfers. (See Solution Spotlight.) Aimed at broker/dealers, this service will help them more closely monitor and manage the activities of their registered representatives who initiate fund transfers within variable annuity products. Development of the service is an industry priority, as identified by the Securities Industry Association’s Insurance Panel last year, due to increased regulatory concern over agents who may use fund transfers to engage in illegal market timing and late-day trading activities.
“The regulatory bar is constantly being raised, and carriers and distributors alike are being challenged as never before,” said Ziambras. “A big part of our focus in 2006 will be to continue working with the industry and our business partners to ensure we remain the provider of choice for helping customers manage ongoing and future compliance requirements.”