Adviserwise Blog

If you're anything like me then you look on the early weeks of any new year as a time for optimism, for reviewing the old but looking forward to the year ahead.

There is no doubt that 2012 will not be 'just another new year' but in fact the last of its kind as far as the financial advice market is concerned. If we fast forward 12 months, we will be looking out over a different landscape for product providers, platforms, and advisers and their clients.

This new world requires businesses at all levels to have the ability to adapt working practices and advice models and to make use of the resources available to them - in particular efficient technology solutions – if they are to be successful in 2012 and beyond.

Origo has been at the forefront of developing user-friendly technology solutions and standards for nearly 23 years. There is no doubt we have changed over those years but our core strategy remains the same - to develop common eCommerce services and standards that bring down costs, increase efficiencies and provide effective, secure, easy-to-use solutions that benefit our industry.

If I had to pick on two of our biggest achievements to date, the first might be our Unipass digital certificate, which gives users a single online identity and does away with the need for multiple passwords. It’s built on state of the art technology but is extremely simple to use and we now have 28,000 staff in over 7,000 adviser, platform and provider firms using this secure access system.

The other achievement is our Options Transfers service, which has been extremely successful in enabling faster pension to annuity, pension to pension, drawdown to drawdown transfers. In fact, it has caused the average times for pension to annuity transfers to be slashed from 51 days to less than 10 days (3.5 days of which are taken by the banking (BACS) process – same day assets transfers have been achieved using the Options Transfers User Interface and CHAPS).

So, that's some of what we have done in the past but what are we doing this year? Actually, we have a lot to look forward to in 2012. I'm going to highlight three important services here.

Asset Re-Registration. This is an exciting development of the Options Transfers service. We already have 29 organisations using the service for cash transfers but we have expanded that to support a far broader range of products and wrappers, including SIPPs, stocks and shares ISAs, OEICs, unit trusts, GIAs and bonds.

One of the key deadlines set by the FSA, which also takes effect from 31 December 2012, is for platforms to have efficient re-registration systems in place to enable in-specie transfer of assets. Options now gives platforms an 'off-the-shelf', centrally hosted, web-based service, that users can log in to and start using straight away. It really couldn't be simpler.

Data Matching service. This is not a new service but one we have been developing and will be giving greater focus in 2012 because it can deliver real benefit for the industry in, among other things, identifying orphan assets and connecting them with the owners or beneficiaries.

Another development about which we are excited is the relaunch of the Origo website. If I am honest, I have to say the old site is looking its age so we have set out to create not only a more comprehensive and, in my opinion, fresher and far better looking site, but one that will be more accessible and useful for advisers, platforms and product providers alike.

For more information on our Re-Registration or Data Matching services get in touch with us on 0131 451 5181.

As for the new website, we are in the last stages of development, so, as they say, watch this space!

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

I like to think of myself as a well-travelled individual. I like holidays, adventures, airports and I also like planes. But I didn't like flying through a wild and windy storm as I did last Thursday. I think those Embraer 190SR planes that BA likes to use as shuttles for LCY are pretty good at going sideways at take-off. Trying to keep my mind busy during this turbulent flight, I got to thinking about the most significant flights of my life. In chronological order, here are my top 3 for your eyes only:

Aged 1 month. Flying LHR – JNB. Funny enough, I was born one month earlier in Glasgow with a Celtic strip waiting for me. My claim to fame for this flight was being the youngest (then) to be flying on a 747. More importantly, I like to think of this flight as my maiden return voyage home. An oxymoron and a half!

Aged 4 years. Flying JNB - LHR (there is a theme here). After a 3 engine failure, we had to make an unscheduled and unwelcomed visit (we were flying SAA) at a stormy Nairobi Airport while they ‘fixed it’. While there, I lost my dear Snoopy. He came everywhere with me. I’m now on Snoopy V 3.

Aged 16 years. Flying DUR – LHR. Leaving South Africa for good to start a new life in England... and my wee sister crying as we checked-in for our flight. Awww...

Well, I made it LCY safe, if a little windswept, and I'm ready to tell the tale of #PlatforumChicks.

Having attended a couple of conferences this year, there is a similarity in the general messages that I'm now able to categorise under my newly created CATS theory.

C – Customer centricity. Who are we working for and what are their long-term plans? Who is ultimately paying? It seems we keep forgetting about ‘what the customer wants’.

A – Accessibility. Use technology that makes products more accessible. Distribution and who controls the channel is changing. Some argue away from the Manufacturers, to Intermediaries and then from Intermediaries to Customers.

T – Transparency. Charges, base rates, fees, commission – each party in the value chain must be able to clearly demonstrate how they add value and how they are rewarded for it.

S – Simplicity. Keep it simplz. We are working in a very complex world, ruled by regulation and legislation and we need to KISS.

There was also some debate around Social Media and how it can best be employed in our industry. In general, it was agreed that having a personality, a human face that is true to its values, is essential to making an organisation's social media efforts successful.

So, until the next conference where I will be able to test my CATS theory, I will continue working on my top significant flights. Until then, Season's Greetings and I wish you a happy, healthy and successful 2012.

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

This year's Platforum conference (the fifth of its kind), is probably one of the best conferences I've attended. It was well organised, had a great mix of speakers, good content and even had an undercurrent of a virtual party taking place on Twitter.

Hashtag PlatformV was working overtime with the likes of Nucleus' David Ferguson and Skandia's Graham Bentley, who managed to tweet (discreetly) from the podium while debating the issues around platform selection.

Mobile phone batteries, including mine, had run dry by the close of the event – constant monitoring of #platforumv became highly addictive! The use of Twitter during the event meant that anything said and done was reported to the 'whole world' within seconds of it happening.

There were Tweets of statistics, controversial remarks, apologetic coughing and even concerns of iPad battery longevity, which enabled those not attending to get a real sense of events as they happened. So, without repeating what can already be found on Twitter, here are just some of my observations and where I think Origo can assist:

- Integration, integration, integration: Platforms talking to back office systems (or CRMs), talking to extranets and back again. It's clear that advisers use a range of systems, services and platforms and there is a real need to find a way of moving growing amounts of data from one place to another, without re-keying. Fortunately, our new Pre-population Standard was developed to support exactly this requirement.

- Regulation, Legislation, Information: The RDR, data protection and 'getting to know your customers' are just some of the changes and commitments to which we must abide. There was talk of dirty data, business processes and tighter margins. Origo's Standards (i.e. Quotes and Adviser Remuneration) are RDR compliant, our Data Matching service is helping providers trace 'gone-aways' and clean up databases, while Adviserwise is here to educate about the benefits of processing business electronically.

- Changing Consumer Demographics: Today, an individual can have a number of pension pots with some containing a range of assets. Then, at retirement, we are increasingly exercising our Open Market Option. All of this means 'transfers' and lots of it. Our Options Transfer service with its new re-registration facility is currently helping 27 organisations improve their transfer processing.

For platforms, providers, advisers and software suppliers, the majority of the points raised and discussed at yesterday's conference will have impact. I find it reassuring that in our role as the eCommerce standards and services body, we bring together different parties to develop industry-wide solutions that reduce costs and increase efficiencies. We might even tweet about it as well!

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

Blog entry edited by an administrator on Mon 17 Oct 2011 at 11:02

Can you feel it? That autumn-y, back-to-school feeling is definitely in the air. And although this may spell melancholy for the under-18's, at Origo's Adviserwise, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about what the immediate future holds.
Back in April, I blogged http://www.adviserwise.com/blogs/blog_Adviserwise_comments.asp?BlogPage=blog_Adviserwise&BlogEntry=31&comments=1&BlogAuthor=%20Justine%20McCoy about our forthcoming Re-Registration service and the working group we assembled to steer the project towards success. Four months on, I'm proud to report that we performed a demonstration of the new solution to a large group of stakeholders and it was a resounding success.

This means that we're making good progress towards going live with the Origo Re-Registration service, which spells good news for product providers, advisers and clients alike.

The successful demo is the latest milestone for Origo, following months of research, development and consultation with industry stakeholders to devise a method for faster in-specie transfer of assets. We have a successful track record in eServices development, and we constantly strive to innovate in areas that add real value to the financial services industry, including of course, the adviser community.

Leveraging our expertise in the industry, we launched Origo Options Transfers in late 2008. Today, tens of thousands of transactions are handled safely and securely each month by Options, successfully reducing, by 80%, the time taken for processing the transfer of clients' pensions to a different provider, or to an annuity.

Based on the combination of our success with Options Transfers, our experience in industry collaboration and the positive feedback on our recent demo, we're very much looking forward to what the future holds for Origo's Re-Registration Transfer Service.

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

The FSA's platform policy statement has revealed several important aspects for advisers to take note of. This of course includes the hotly debated cash rebates ban, but also the advice given about the number of platforms advisers need to be using in order to call themselves ‘independent’ (http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/wrap-and-technology/fsa-provides-clarity-on-platforms-and-independence/1035527.article).

The FSA believes that it is unlikely that an adviser firm would be able to apply one platform across their customer base (http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/wrap-and-technology/disappointing-lack-of-platform-clarity-from-the-fsa/1035577.article). Instead, advisers should use platforms that meet each separate client’s needs. If you are using multiple platforms, our new Pre-Population standard, which we are pleased to unveil this week, could be a great asset. "Pre-Pop" as we call it for short, is part of Origo's Flexible Integration Toolkit (FIT), which provides integration capabilities between the various applications used within the industry. Once implemented, advisers can move pre-sales data between different systems – for example, from a platform to a back-office system – as with Origo's other Standards, it runs on universal software that works across all industry platforms. As a result, Pre-Population enables advisers to work more productively, by saving time and dramatically decreasing the risk of data entry errors.

At Origo, we constantly strive to provide appropriate standards and services to facilitate eCommerce in the financial services industry, which is why we developed Pre-Population in response to the rise in wraps and platforms currently available.



You can read more about our new Pre-Pop standard in an article on Money Marketing last week (http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/wrap-and-technology/industry-must-learn-from-mobile-technology-mistakes/1035702.article).

To find out more about the Pre-Population Standard, please email Michael Roe: mroe@origoservices.com


Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

An article written in last week's Money Marketing echoed something that Origo has evangelised all along: namely, that technology is key to surmounting the challenges our financial services industry continues to face. The impending Retail Distribution Review (RDR) is having a sweeping impact on advisers, including their orientation towards technology. What may once have been a "nice-to-have" for adviser firms is now undoubtedly a must-have, as the Money Marketing article http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/wrap-and-technology/how-do-you-get-more-advisers-better-engaged-with-technology?/1033355.article would attest.

So in the age of the RDR, why should more advisers be chomping at the bit to take advantage of eServices that would undoubtedly make their businesses more efficient, eliminate costly errors and help them achieve compliance?

In our own study from March of this year, two thirds (60%) of respondents said that the availability of eCommerce tools would help their business during the transition period, which shows that the majority of advisers believe that technology solutions can help their business thrive through the RDR changes.

But belief and action are two different things, and the call for more advisers to bring eCommerce into the very heart of their business is getting louder by the day. The benefits are clear, but bear repeating.

The article suggests that adviser firms that have technology "deeply embedded" across their business will be able to operate more profitably. And if that wasn't enough incentive, it goes on to suggest that the various layers of reporting required for something like adviser remuneration alone, would have most firms buried under copious amounts of paperwork. When the administrative burden is so high, there will be less time to focus on new client acquisition - the engine of growth for adviser firms.

Interestingly, the article also points to a lack of affordable training on client management systems as a reason why advisers aren't seeing the maximum benefit from technology. At Adviserwise from Origo, not only do we offer links to free industry eServices such as Agency Services and Unipass, but we also offer free, practical guides and workshops to make the journey to eCommerce adoption a positive one, with lasting business benefits for advisers.

Lastly, it would not be an exaggeration to say that for many advisers, technology adoption also offers a lifeline: many may struggle to exist post-RDR without it. At Origo's Adviserwise.com, technology is at the very core of our existence. Whilst we can’t rush you onto the eCommerce bandwagon, we’ll continue to demonstrate how - with its help - what a positive impact eCommerce will have on your business in the run-up to, and beyond the RDR.

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

We recently took part in the first of a series of roadshows to showcase what eServices are available to help support adviser firms in the run up to the RDR (Retail Distribution Review) and beyond. Arranged by Plum Software and supported not only by us folks at Origo, but Standard Life, Voyant and JP Morgan, the first roadshow took place last week in London and was well attended.

With RDR being the key theme, we talked about the free industry resources and online services available to advisers to help them in their preparations. Services such as Unipass Digital Certificates (http://www.unipass.co.uk/unipass/pages/home.aspx) and Securemail ( http://www.unipass.co.uk/securemail/pages/home.aspx) and in particular our Agency Registration and Administration Services were demonstrated and well-liked.

The Agency Registration Service (http://agencyreg.origoservices.com/) enables advisers to apply for Terms of Business with multiple providers online and in one go! Once agencies have been set up with providers the Agency Administration Service (http://agencyadmin.origoservices.com/) enables efficient ongoing administration with requests for; additional agency codes, agency closures, change of address, change of bank account, change of service provider and panel membership, transfers and novations and letters of authority. All of which will be on the increase as adviser firms evolve in light of the RDR.

The advisers we met were particularly interested in letters of authority request which offers an electronic and signatureless letter of authority form that can be sent to providers instantly or a generic paper based letter of authority form that can be pre-populated for each provider, printed off for the clients to sign and then sent to providers at the correct addresses provided. One adviser firm at the roadshow recently spent a lot of time just finding out where to send their letters of authority to and the use of the Agency Admin Service would have definitely saved them a lot of time and effort.

To learn more about the Agency Administration Service why not come along to the next RDR Roadshow ([url]http://www.adviserwise.com/roadshow/[url]) or you can contact me (bbechelli@origoservices.com)
for a free demonstration.

Ben Bechelli
Business Analyst
Origo

You might not know it, but there is a whole raft of free electronic services to help financial advisers get started in business, generate business and maintain business.

Paul Pettitt, managing director of Origo, recently wrote in an IFAOnline article (http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/professional-adviser/feature/2079020/business-guide-ecommerce) about the first, practical steps an adviser firm can take towards successfully adopting eServices for the benefit of their business – particularly in light of the fast-approaching Retail Distribution Review (RDR) deadline.

Origo has supported the industry through many significant changes, as with the RDR and the development of eCommerce standards that ensure transactions such as Quotes, New Business Submission, Tracking and Adviser Remuneration will be RDR-compliant. Over the years, many more eServices have emerged from various back-office systems, portals, platforms and product provider extranets, aimed at helping advisers demonstrate more value whilst bringing down the cost of business.

With the RDR just around the corner, it's important to embrace eCommerce now, and take advantage of the benefits eServices can bring to advisers' businesses. Origo understands that there are many eServices for advisers to choose from, and the task can be daunting. But the process needn't feel like a game of, "what's behind door number one?" Through Adviserwise.com, we can help untangle the confusion and unlock success through a single, winning key.

Adviserwise.com was established as the financial adviser's gateway to eServices. It is supported by detailed information and practical, how-to workshops about available eServices. Through its free online business planning tool (eServices Planner) it also helps advisers realise the benefits of adopting electronic business processing methods, by providing an impact analysis on key figures such as staff capacity, cash flow and profit and loss. But there are fundamental industry eServices that are free to advisers that will make an immediate impact on time savings, such as:

• Agency Registration (https://agencyreg.origoservices.com) enables advisers wishing to set up trading relationships with multiple providers by offering a single registration application form that is submitted securely online

• Agency Administration (https://agencyadmin.origoservices.com) makes the process of communicating changes such as leavers, change of address, and client authority hassle-free. This online service captures, validates and submits advisers’ agency admin requests to multiple providers securely, in one go

• Unipass (http://www.unipass.co.uk) eliminates the need for multiple passwords to various portals and provider extranets, by providing a single online identity – making it easier and safer for advisers, paraplanners and administrators to access a range of eServices

If you would like to talk to us about these free eServices and any others that you find right here at Adviserwise.com, please contact us (http://www.adviserwise.com/ContactUs).

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

There are costs associated with creating, sending and processing Letters of Authority (LoAs) to inform product providers of a client's new servicing adviser, or to request information on a client's policies. These costs are estimated by some advisers at £500 per LoA, and can rise as high as £1200 for some clients.



Consequently, at an industry level, the overall cost of LoAs could be staggering - around £10m per annum simply to process. Add into the equation the cost of the lost opportunity for advisers to be generating new business and the real cost could exceed £100m.

Evidence of these costs and frustrations with LoAs were voiced in an IFA Online article written by a professional adviser (http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/professional-adviser/news/1721422/advisers-warn-anti-tcf-letters-authority). The lack of a consistent approach to the handling of LoAs within the industry was highlighted as causing possible delays in servicing clients' – which could be seen as anti TCF.

Help however, is at hand. As part of its free-to-use Agency Administration Service, Origo has launched an online LoA request facility which will assist advisers with this very issue.

Origo, in its natural role as industry collaborator, has worked with 13 leading providers to produce an Industry standard LoA form that can be printed off from the service and be used for adviser requests for client policy information and to notify providers that they are the new servicing adviser for the client. Using this form removes the need for advisers to maintain, store and use their own LoA documents which may not fulfil all the providers' requirements.

Origo's Agency Administration Service also takes this generic LoA form a stage further by providing it as an online request that can be submitted electronically to providers simultaneously without the need for client signatures. As more providers choose to go paperless, the signature-less option looks set to reduce adviser administration costs further still, so advisers can spend more of their time with clients, and less time on administration..

To find out more about the Agency Admin Service and the Letters of Authority request, please email agencyservices@origoservices.com

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO

Blog entry edited by administrator on Thu, 12 May, 2011 at 4:09:27 PM

I'm beginning to feel like I'm four years old again, but on Christmas Eve. The excitement and build up to a day full of surprises is almost becoming unbearable. I may have even purchased some unofficial merchandise to help me get into the spirit of things… But in all honesty, royal or not, weddings in general are such joyous occasions. The joining together and the legal union is really all about collaboration, of which we at Origo know something about.



As the eCommerce standards and services body, we work collaboratively with the industry to develop automated solutions to key issues. Our Standards, for example, are used across the industry so that providers, platforms, software suppliers and portals can trade electronically, ultimately providing the consumer with a more efficient, and effective service. More recently, our Options Transfer Service has seen even more providers marry into the successful initiative - all for the greater good of reducing pension transfer times by 80%.

So, looking ahead, what of the next wedding? And no, I’m not talking about Zara and Mike, but of Origo's Re-Registration Service. The ceremony is pretty much underway and our happy pilot group are coming together for the greater good of reducing the time taken for 'in-specie' transfer of assets. An extension of our good work already delivered by Options, the Re-Reg service will also enable clients' assets to remain invested throughout a SIPP or ISA transfer (so not subject to potential taxable events).

So in the spirit of community, happy unions and collaboration, Origo has extended its invitation for others to join the re-reg pilot group, for free! Simply email us at Options@origoservices.com and we’ll be in touch with the details.

Justine McCoy, eServices Adoption & Marketing Manager
ORIGO