Over the last year I have written many times about the bewildering number of front and back office systems that are currently available on the market to the IFAs. But each of the systems continues to have their own success and the market seems undiminished.

A recent Study performed by True Potential confirms the size of the opportunity these companies are vying for.  The study showed that around 43% of IFAs still either have no technology at all or use their own systems – either paper based or spreadsheets.  When the study looked beyond this headline figure the results were equally stark, paper is the dominant method for collecting, filing and reporting on client and company data.  Indeed the only process that isn’t overwhelmingly led by paper is the valuations’ process.

With such poor take up of technology it was unsurprising to see that a ratio of three administrators to every four advisers existed.  Contrast this to technology led distributors such as True Potential’s largest client Positive Solutions, who have a ratio of 33 to 1 and you can already see a powerful business case for technology.  Add to this the compliance benefits/demands, customer expectations, and adviser efficiency gains and the case for technology is compelling.  Surely the 43% will shrink drastically in the coming months!

Released today is the second in our series of E-commerce Matters Newsletters.

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I read with interest the other day that AWD are aiming for a single application form.  Single app forms have been the holy grail of the insurance industry for as long as I can remember and surely a concept that should be able to be delivered.  Packagers in the mortgage industry, after all, often have a single form agreed across a number of Lenders.  But how many times has this been tried and failed in other market sectors.

Insurers protect their approaches with vigour and conversations in the past have stalled on items such as agreeing a single list of accepted titles for the applicants, ‘market differentiation’ and underwriting emphasis.

I remember one industry attempt by Origo where the industry tried to agree common content to an application form.  In this attempt the goals were more modest than the AWD attempt, as they were simply looking to agree a standard structure, agreeing key questions and their order while allowing provider specific content also.

Through this came the defined a set of standard content for bond applications.  Bonds are fairly standardised and don’t have the variety of different underwriting questions associated with protection policies so should have been an ideal start point.  However the standards were rarely followed properly, eventually being virtually abandoned, in spite of being driven by some powerful IFA’s at the time, such as Towry Law and Halifax IFA.

What is interesting to note is that times seem to have moved on and insurers are keener to win distribution through key distributors such AWD so let’s hope for more success this time.