Adoption of STP Solutions Key to Industry Growth

Adam Bryan, Managing Director, DTCC Insurance & Retirement Services

DTCC is always searching for new ways to drive product adoption and expand our user community, enabling us to deliver on our value proposition of reducing cost and risk for our customers and providing greater efficiencies in insurance processing. And in these challenging times, we can report that customer usage of our services (old and new) has gone against the tide and posted growth in 2009. The growth comes from our strengthened partnership with the industry that has built key components of automation while encouraging product adoption through easier access to our core solutions and fee reductions. The Insurance & Retirement Services team is finding new ways to "work smarter" with our customers. And our success is evident in the numbers thus far for 2009.

Expanded Usage and New Solutions

We are seeing a 16% increase over 2008 in total transaction volume. Seventeen new clients have joined our user community with dozens more in the pipeline. Current users are expanding their usage and have added 55 more services. And we have gone live with new solutions (Attachments and IFT Access^SM).

While we focus resources on expanding the number and reach of our services and connecting new users, we continually explore new ways to add value to our current customer relationships. As of October 1, we have introduced discounts and a bundled pricing initiative to provide our customers with transaction fees that support expanded automation and reduced operating costs. The new pricing increases the savings already produced through millions of dollars in fee cuts over the last three years.

With the upheaval in the financial services industry producing a number of mergers and acquisitions, we have developed a "major event" strategy that will help our customers manage such a transition more efficiently and at a lower cost. We are offering a price discount for an event that would involve an unusually large number of transactions, and our customer service input and support will help firms navigate the process in the most efficient way.

Greater Access at Lower Cost

We are also introducing different pricing models, such as bundled pricing, along with other incentives and new efficiencies that will support product adoption.

Another way of working smarter is to lower your development costs, and in the case of our "Access" web application, we are lowering them to zero. We are delivering the In-Force Transaction (IFT) component to our Access platform, an important part of our strategy to expand usage of core services through a direct desktop application. IFT Access facilitates changes in Broker Identification Number (BIN) and Representative of Record (REP).

Finally, we have rolled out Attachments – a key capability to add the electronic movement of documentation to our core messaging services (a capability that will increase in value as it is added to other core transactions). The expanded Access platform and Attachments are now live. The Attachments capability will also be available on our Access platform in 2010.

In addition, we are moving forward on the pilot for Replacements, a solution that is of considerable importance to carriers and the industry. And there are other proposed solutions in the pipeline to automate and standardize your business needs throughout the life cycle of an insurance product.

The current times may be challenging, but we are still formulating ideas to help you grow your business. Our continuing dialogue on these ideas is critical to our collective success. And please don’t hesitate to contact me with any comments or questions (abryan@dtcc.com).

Adam Bryan
Managing Director
Insurance & Retirement Services
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation