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DTCC: 's Insurance Services Reduces Fees for Annuity Applications Service
New York, May 27, 2003 - The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) today announced that it has reduced fees for annuity applications processed through its Insurance Services group. The change is effective June 1, 2003 and is the second fee reduction in less than a year.
The new pricing schedule is as follows:
- Application transactions from 1 to 1,999 per month will be charged $3.00 per application.
- Transactions from 2,000 to 3,499 per month will be charged $2.00 per application.
- Transactions of more than 3,500 per month will cost just $1.00 per application.
"As we have successfully demonstrated in other financial sectors that DTCC has been involved in - including equities and mutual funds - we can continue to reduce fees as processing volumes increase and we achieve critical mass," said John C. Ziambras, vice president of Business Development, Insurance Services. "This reduction is in anticipation of a significant increase in volume that we expect from both carriers and distributors as a result of this price reduction."
Ziambras said that the fee reduction would "benefit insurance distributors and carriers across the board since it will help new, lower-volume players sign up for the service, while helping all existing clients, including high-volume users, continue to reduce costs with a newly-reduced pricing schedule."
The first annuity fee reduction, announced in July 2002, saw the first-tier price of $7.50 per application processed each month reduced to $5.00 per application.
"We recently decided to make available to the entire insurance industry our copyrighted record layouts for the processing of fixed and variable annuities," said Ziambras. "This move, coupled with our reduced fees, should result in a significant increase in processing volumes for our annuity application service as more and more new clients use DTCC's service."
Processing volume for Insurance Services' annuity application service has already increased in recent months with major broker/dealers, including Merrill Lynch, Legg Mason, Primevest and AIG Advisors beginning to process annuity applications through DTCC.
About DTCC
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is a holding company for four subsidiary businesses - a depository and three clearing corporations - as well as the co-owner with Thomson Financial of Omgeo, a global joint venture. Through its subsidiaries, DTCC provides clearance, settlement and information services for equities, corporate debt, municipal debt, government securities, mortgage-backed securities and emerging markets debt. DTCC provides custody and asset servicing for more than two million securities issues from the United States and 100 other countries and territories. In addition, it is a leading clearinghouse for mutual funds and insurance products, linking funds and carriers with distribution networks. DTCC has operating facilities in multiple locations in the United States and overseas. For more information on DTCC, visit www.dtcc.com.
DTCC's Insurance Services links distributors with insurance carriers via a secure electronic network and offers a suite of low-cost services for the insurance industry that automates, standardizes and streamlines the distribution, processing and money settlement of insurance products nationwide. Insurance Services currently services 46 insurance carriers representing 101 subsidiaries, 95 distributors and supports 1,468 trading relationships. Insurance Services is an offering of National Securities Clearing Corporation, a subsidiary of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. For more information, see Insurance Services at http://ips.dtcc.com.