The Senior Advisory Board: A Strategic Forum

DTCC IQ SAT DOWN WITH LEONARD SCHMITT, DIRECTOR OF RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT WITH DTCC I&RS TO DISCUSS THE MOST RECENT SENIOR ADVISORY BOARD MEETING.

IQ: WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE SENIOR ADVISORY BOARD (SAB) MEETINGS?

LS:In 2007, Insurance Services formed the SAB to provide our clients an industry forum in which they could provide us with strategic guidance as well as discuss with their peers the issues and ideas the industry was dealing with. We knew it was important to develop a community, in which major insurance carriers and distributors could discuss the collective needs of the industry, providing us with invaluable guidance as to what we could do to solve broader insurance needs. These meetings are designed to bring together the strategic heads of our insurance clients, and we have found them to be tremendously successful

IQ: WHAT WAS THE PRIMARY AGENDA ITEM ON THE LAST SAB MEETING?

LS: Our June meeting really focused on the new producer training guidelines issued by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) which is clearly an industry-wide challenge, and we discussed the enhancements we are making to help our clients address the new requirements. It was actually at one of our SAB meetings that the NAIC requirements first came to our attention and nearly all of our clients raised this as an issue that would need an immediate solution. At our most recent meeting, we updated the board on the developments we’d made to the LNA service to help firms comply with new requirements and also received the goahead for the development of a centralized data warehouse and web service solution. The SAB provides us with a great forum in which we can share the work we’ve done and get important feedback to guide our ongoing product development. Our clients are a fundamental part of our strategic direction in both the short- and long-term.

IQ: WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF CLIENTS PARTICIPATING IN THE SAB?

LS: We’ve found that clients truly value a strategic forum where everyone’s industry knowledge and experience can be leveraged to better the industry. I believe they appreciate having the opportunity to bounce ideas off of us as a trusted consultant and advisor. As with the NAIC compliance requirements, our clients were able to leverage the SAB meeting to share what was a widespread industry challenge and as a result, we were able to immediately kick-start the development of a solution for that challenge.

IQ: WHAT WAS ANOTHER MAJOR INITIATIVE THAT CLIENTS RAISED DURING THE LAST SAB MEETING?

LS: Interestingly, life insurance is an area of the industry we are becoming focused on. The life insurance marketplace is very mature, but as a result maintains a high degree of manual processes carried over from years of paper-intensive workflows. From DTCC’s perspective, we are focused on paper elimination and workflow automation and believe we are uniquely positioned to bring processing efficiencies to the life insurance market segment. During our SAB meeting, one of our clients shared their goals to automate new business and in-force transaction processing for their life insurance business, and suggested that DTCC might be able to play a role in that market. As a result, several other clients also shared that they were increasingly focused on achieving automation solutions in life insurance, similar to what they’d achieved in the annuities business. Now, we have several carriers and distributors discussing how to utilize DTCC in life insurance to increase transparency with their producers and end customers.

IQ: FROM DTCC’S SIDE, WHAT WERE SOME OF THE DEVELOPMENTS YOU SHARED WITH THE SAB?

LS: We discussed the Data Analytics Reporting Service initiative as well as our current development project to support in-force transactions and annuity contract maintenance. During each meeting we share with them updates on new initiatives as well as development of new features for existing services, and we always aim to receive frank and honest feedback to improve the services we deliver to them.

IQ: WHEN IS THE NEXT SAB MEETING?

LS Our next in-person board meeting will be held in October, 2011, and we are very much looking forward to speaking with our clients at that time. The insurance industry continues to evolve and we truly appreciate our clients taking the time to work with us, as it’s thanks to their ongoing support that we are able to deliver the services the industry needs.