Service Awards: Data tables

Each year, they are asked to judge the performance of the full range of companies in the financial sector, on several criteria.

The providers get marked out of ten on new business processing, product support, personal contct, central processing, commission service and electronic business. These categories applied to both Life and Pensions and Investments. In Mortgages, advisers were asked to give their verdict on speed of processing, feedback, personal contact, reliability, flexible creiteria and electronic business.

Financial Adviser readers were able to vote online, through FTAdviser.com and through paper voting forms. The results, garnered from 6500 readers, were collated by Coredata, which analysed the data and produced averages from all the responses for the businesses whose products advisers use.

The results are then sorted through a ranking system, so that the top firms achieved five stars, and the rest were allocated stars according to their position in the list of results.

Every five star winner in the section categories won an award, and there were also prizes for most improved company, e-commerce, as well as company of the year and outstanding achievment.

Melanie Tringham is features editor of Financial Adviser