Wesleyan Financial Services has invested in a multi-channel, customer contact management solution from Marlborough Stirling, a leading provider of software and services to the mortgage, life and pensions and investment markets. Omiga, Marlborough Stirling`s point-of-sale (POS) solution, has been chosen as the foundation to support Wesleyan`s strategic plans to develop its affinity group offering. This it will achieve by giving them better and consistent access to data and functionality across all channels.
The investment sees the first implementation of a broader financial services version of Omiga, which has previously concentrated on customer engagement in the mortgage industry. Omiga will now support fully regulated life & pensions sales and servicing from Fact Find through Needs Analysis, Illustrations and New Business Applications.
Omiga will be integrated with Lamda, Wesleyan`s back-office administration solution, also provided by Marlborough Stirling. Data will transfer seamlessly between the two systems. In the front office this will provide Wesleyan`s affinity groups, direct sales force and customers with a consolidated and up-to-date view of individual customer records, whether they contact the company via the internet or call centre. Omiga will present the full portfolio of products distributed by Wesleyan, which in future may include multi-tied products from other insurers. Presently Wesleyan`s front and back office systems are disparate. Data captured at the point-of-sale is not available to the rest of the organisation in real time, and in many cases has to be manually re-keyed into Wesleyan`s back office systems. The new Marlborough Stirling solution will make back-office services available in the front office which is essential to changing the behaviour of customers towards more direct forms of servicing. At the same time it is intended to deliver the cost savings associated with customer self-service and reduced administration.
Once live, users and customers will have an integrated servicing capability based on a single consolidated view of the customer, enabling interactions through any channel and supporting enquiries, new business and policy servicing (historically split between back and front office).
The contract comes less then six months since Wesleyan`s pioneering investment to access Lamda, Marlborough Stirling`s life and pensions back-office administration solution, on an ASP basis.
Ray Lowe, IT director at Wesleyan, commented: "This latest investment reflects Wesleyan`s belief that investing in cutting edge, business focused IT systems is crucial to any company that wants to continually drive its costs down. Most financial services organisations have standard CRM systems in place that can`t offer a single view of the customer, let alone offer this in real time."
He continued, "We chose Marlborough Stirling because as a company we were totally engaged by its market leading solutions and first-class personnel. Furthermore, its recent IPO gave us the confidence that it is a company that has great prospects."
Share
Marlborough Stirling plc (www.marlborough-stirling.com) provides software, services and consultancy to the mortgages, life and pensions and investment market sectors.
Its software and services are designed to enable financial service providers to meet consumer`s demand for products that are flexible, capable of being distributed through a variety of channels and processed efficiently.
It employs approximately 900 people and has offices in Cheltenham, Camberley, Brighton, Dublin, Douglas in the Isle of Man, Cape Town in South Africa and Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.
The company floated on the London Stock Exchange in April 2001 and gained entry to the FTSE250 two months later. Ranked as 4th fastest growing IT company in the UK and overall 74th fastest growing company in Europe by Research organisation Growthplus, Marlborough Stirling earned revenue of lb50.1m in 2000
Wesleyan
The Wesleyan is a mutual assurance society, which was founded 160 years ago by members of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Birmingham.
The Wesleyan specialises in providing individual personal financial advice on investments, pensions, savings, protection and mortgages
Editorial contacts