Ewan Smith, managing director, said that the good news is, that it is market leaders in this area.
He added: “While we’re really proud of how far we’ve come, we’re even more excited about where we’re going. Building on the industry recognition we’ve enjoyed, we’re concentrating on the areas we feel can help advisers meet the challenges that lie ahead.”
Mr Smith explained how Scottish Life has invested in the development of its services to help advisers streamline their workload and reduce some of the time-consuming administration that can often get in the way of what they do best – advising their clients.
He added: “Our new online servicing tools can be used to run illustrations, download review packs, make investment changes and so much more. But our commitment to providing the best possible service doesn’t stop there – we’ve created a team of dedicated consultants who are happy to meet advisers face-to-face and show them exactly where our online support can cut costs and add real value.”
Mr Smith said how it is also committed to delivering innovative products to the market: “Our Governed Retirement Income Portfolios have been developed to meet the needs of customers taking regular income from their pension. These are supported by a bespoke servicing tool – giving advisers everything they need to do business with us as efficiently as possible.”
Dentons
The ethos at Dentons has been one of delivering service and flexibility to clients without putting unnecessary barriers in the way.
Martyn Rose, chairman, explained that with the Sipp marketplace increasingly crowded the continued delivery of a market leading service proposition has become crucial.
Mr Rose added: “This is one of the few areas where a firm can really stand out and as a result service remains a key focus for Dentons.”
He continued: “Continuity amongst our staff generates long term relationships with advisers and clients. Regular internal training and staff meetings create a forum where experiences can be shared. Client feedback is sought and where appropriate, systems and procedures have been improved as a result. We are also involved in Investor in Customers who have assessed a number of companies where the customer base includes advisers and Denton’s score was one of the highest on record.”
Mr Rose said that as the industry changes, Dentons recognises that it is important for it to continue to evolve.
He continued: “We re-launched our Sipp proposition in February supported by a state of the art website and adviser Sipp web portal allowing 24 hour access to all relevant information they might need. The sales, technical and marketing functions have been strengthened and we have also launched a technical advisory service. This has helped us build a portfolio of case studies which we will showcase in the next round of our education seminars. Our regular communications and newsletters also help to keep advisers informed of industry, technical and company developments.”
MetLife Europe
Being a newcomer can be hard, but having celebrated its fifth year as a presence in the UK market, Shirley Fell, operations director said that MetLife has distinguished itself by being one of the fastest growing life and pensions providers in the UK.
Ms Fell said: “With a clear focus on listening to IFAs and offering product solutions that are needed, we are approaching the £3bn AUM mark this year, which is a clear confirmation of our strategy.”
She added that MetLife is not complacent however and that products are not the end of the story.
Ms Fell continued: “Service has to be part of a company’s core values and we are confident that is the case at MetLife. Not only do we set tough service promises, we endeavour to meet them at all times. We are one of the only companies to have regional operations managers in place across the country, working in partnership with sales development managers. This ensures that any local issues can be quickly escalated and resolved.”
She added that MetLife ensures that training and education is provided for staff to ensure they deliver on its service promise.
Ms Fell explained: “Having high standards means that it is also important to carry out regular quality checks and seek feedback from our customers, who are at the heart of everything we do. Our customers’ views are important and allow us to continually improve the service we provide.”
Just Retirement
Last year’s winner of the outstanding achievement award, Just Retirement, said that its primary focus has been on trying to make life as easy as possible for IFAs to do business with it.
Pam Day, director of customer services, said that it is all about understanding the IFAs world.
Ms Day added: “We now have specific modules with staff where we look at what it is like to be an IFA, and we have had a couple of IFAs come in and talk to us to help bring their issues to life.”
Ms Day said that it has recruited over 200 staff in the last 12 months to ensure that it can provide as much support as possible and will continue to deliver a consistent experience for the IFAs.
She continued: “The retirement income business is growing at double digits, but the recruitment of staff has kept pace to make sure that we don’t let the IFA down in any way .We are looking to try and find ways to anticipate IFAs’ future needs by looking at what the areas are that are going to help support them do business in the future. One of our primary drivers is the service quality, so as volumes increase we will continue to invest in staff and getting the right staff more importantly to make sure that we consistently achieve that.”
Ms Day said that over the next 12 months it will continue to build on its experience, and customer service career pathways.
She added: “Traditionally customer services has been seen as a launch pad to other areas. What we have done is establish very clear career paths for people so they can continue to build their experience in customer service and stay within the area.”
Understanding the customer experience is core to Walker Crips offering their IFAs a five star service. They treat their customers as they would like to be treated and focus on delivering a service that is prompt, clear and friendly.
LV=
Investments in propositions and service over the last 12 months has been the key to considerable growth in LV=’s life business.
Richard Rowney, managing director, life and pensions, said: “On the protection side we’ve streamlined our underwriting process to make it easier for advisers to place new business with us. We have also made significant enhancements to our critical illness cover which has proved popular with advisers.”
Mr Rowney added that in the future it expects to see more people seeking products that offer a higher income or more flexibility in retirement.
“We have placed ourselves well to provide advisers and their clients with these services,” he said.
Mr Rowney continued: “We are committed to helping advisers confidently discuss our products with their clients and, with all the recent and impending legislative changes occurring across the industry, LV= has strived to provide advisers with clarity as to what the changes mean for both them and their clients through dedicated microsites and masterclasses.”
Mr Rowney said that priding itself on offering a high standard of service to both clients and advisers led LV= to launch a financial apprenticeship for staff within the life and pensions business in order to ensure it maintains that level.
He added: “The industry will be significantly different in 2013, and we will continue to engage with advisers to ensure that our offering meets the needs of them and their clients.”
Axa Wealth
Axa Wealth boasts that its focus on innovation has never waned, with a variety of products designed to suit differing needs.
Mike Kellard, chief executive officer, explained how its in-house built pension administration system is extremely flexible, enabling it to respond quickly to changes in the market and regulation.
Mr Kellard said: “Our distribution and adviser support divisions mirror a tailored quality consultancy model designed to enable building deeper and more sustainable relationships with advisers with dedicated support and typically a single point of contact to advisers to work with them on each stage of the RDR journey. Our Basingstoke head office is now home to both our IFA Elevate front office activity and back office capability as well and the dedicated adviser support team.”
Mr Kellard added that as the adviser landscape begins to adapt to the approaching RDR environment, Axa Wealth’s existing 5 star service capabilities have been enhanced with the development of its specialist support to different adviser segments whether they chose a restricted or independent route post-RDR.
He said: “This is achieved through a suite of adviser tools including videos, telephone support and factsheets. Axa Wealth recognises that this is a challenging time for advisers and wherever possible we adapt to help them build their businesses. We were the first provider to announce adviser charging across our full product range back in July so that advisers can determine their own post-RDR position in sufficient time.”
Partnership
Jane Kennedy, Partnership’s chief operating officer, said that service is core to its proposition, and believes that the value it can bring to its advisers and ultimately to the consumer is fundamental to its success.
Ms Kennedy explained: “Central to our proposition is that we see the individual and work to achieve the best for each person, the policyholder, the adviser or the member of staff.”
She continued: “As customers correctly demand ever higher standards, we believe it is critical to develop systems which are sufficiently responsive and flexible to meet their legitimate needs. During 2012 we have achieved this by continuing to recruit extraordinarily talented staff to our exceptional and dedicated team. In addition, system developments, along with reviews of processes and training as part of preparations for RDR and gender directive changes have enabled us to adjust our service proposition across the whole organisation in line with customer requirements.”
However, Ms Kennedy said that it was not complacent and it sought to continually improve and develop its service-led offering.
She said: “In particular, we strive to support our customers by establishing individual relationships which enable us to fully understand their business needs. This allows us to provide not only a consistently good service day-to-day, but also plan for the future and ensure their changing needs are understood and accommodated. We are working hard to address the challenges that our customers will face in 2013, and relish the opportunity to develop a responsive and evolving service proposition as a true partner to our customers.”
Prudential
Making it easier for advisers to do business is at the heart of service improvement at Prudential.
Tulsi Naidu, operations director , explained how achieving two five Star ratings last year has helped the Pru maintain momentum and introduce further improvements across the entire business in 2012.
Ms Naidu said: “The company has gone to great lengths to get closer to intermediaries and understand exactly what it needs to do, to be easier and more helpful to deal with. This feedback has helped it target resources in the areas that matter most to advisers.”
Ms Naidu said how with a continuous improvement plan in place, Prudential is streamlining new business processing and increasing the speed and quality by which it responds to enquiries from advisers.
She added: “The fundamentals of how we do business with advisers continue to evolve each year. Advisers are demanding greater levels of service improvement to help them strip out cost and improve the efficiency of their businesses, as RDR looms large. We have worked hard to listen and respond to what advisers and our people tell us, and this has shaped many of the improvements - streamlined processes, revised application forms, easy on-line applications, enhanced capability of our technical helpdesk - that we have put in place to make doing business with Prudential quicker and easier.”
Paymentshield
Keeping its customers happy is its main priority according to Paymentshield. As such over the last twelve months Tim Johnson, chief executive, explained that it has taken several positive steps to continue to expand its high standards of customer care, launching several new services, developing its products and expanding the ways in which it communicates with its customers.
Mr Johnson said: “Towards the end of 2011 we launched our new intermediary website which features the online version of our Inertia quote and apply system. Then, at the start of 2012, we re-focused our face-to-face and telephone support to ensure more targeted support for brokers depending on whether they are directly authorised or an appointed representative.”
Mr Johnson added that over the last twelve months Paymentshield has expanded its customer communications and introduce new feedback mechanisms.
He continued: “We have piloted welcome calls to customers to ensure that they have received and understood their policy documents and recently introduced customer surveys after a new purchase, policy renewal or claim to identify where we can improve the service we offer. In addition, we have also started to increase our monitoring of customer queries and concerns on Twitter and implemented processes to ensure they are responded to as quickly as possible.
Mr Johnson added: “Customer care remains at the heart of what Paymentshield does. We strive to offer quality cover and excellent service at every touch point.”
Walker Crips
Understanding the customer experience is core to Walker Crips offering IFAs a quality service. They say that they treat its customers as it would like to be treated and focus on delivering a service that is prompt, clear and friendly.
Martin Fairburn, Sipp administration manager, said: “Many of our staff come from an IFA background and this has infused us with an understanding of the IFA position. It has also let us experience the good, and the not so good, of customer experiences and apply the best to what we offer.”
Mr Fairburn added that if an IFA request can be dealt with immediately, it will be.
He continued: “Otherwise we will acknowledge the request and confirm when the information will be available. Responding within an agreed timescale and meeting deadlines may seem to be a small detail to some companies, but we recognise how important that is to an IFA.’
Mr Fairburn also believes that being a small bespoke pension scheme provider also enables Walker Crips pensions to offer some benefits that larger providers may find difficult to deliver.
He said: “We have the flexibility to be able to prioritise requests according to urgency. Our administration team is trained in all aspects of Sipp administration and so they do not have to rely on other departments to get back to them. Although IFAs deal with named administrators to enable us to develop a better understanding of our IFAs’ needs, any member of staff can help with queries and questions, so service levels aren’t restrained by red tape or service centres.”
Standard Life
Standard Life admits that 2012 has been a year of increasing complexity with Solvency II, RDR and Pension Reform to prepare for and that the challenge has been to strike the balance between supporting this regulatory change and continuing to offer a good level of customer service.
Ronnie Collard, UK managing director, customer services, said: “This has been a massive challenge for the industry but at Standard Life, we have got the balance just about right with our approach of putting the customer at the heart of everything we do.”
Mr Collard added: “We get lots of compliments about the professionalism of our people and I get a lot of personal satisfaction in reading what is said. We don’t always get it right and it is vitally important that we learn where we have disappointed people. It avoids any complacency and is the best way to understand what matters most to customers and advisers and what we need to do to put things right.”
Mr Collard said that it is a real team effort at Standard Life and it helps that all colleagues throughout the organisation are equally customer focused.
He added: “Without their support our customer-facing people would not be able to provide the service needed. 2013 is just round the corner and we will be ‘business ready’ for the impact on businesses. We have invested significant time in process redesign, education and awareness and systems improvement so that we can offer the best support possible. 2012 has been a challenging but very exciting year - 2013 will be no different.”
PruProtect
Service is at the heart of everything it does, according to PruProtect. The provider, that only distributes products via intermediaries, said that it recognises that any slip in standards from PruProtect impacts on the vital relationship between adviser and client.
Phil Jeynes, head of account development/PR, said: “We also know that our ongoing success will be based on adviser experience and so we always work with the intermediary in mind.”
Mr Jeynes said that an example of this is that it remains the only insurer to have pledged to ring fence commission due to ex-Honister advisers with cases in its pipeline.
With the rapid growth of its business over the last year, Mr Jeynes added that it has had to be proactive to ensure customer service was not adversely affected.
He continued: “Therefore, we have continued to strengthen what was already the largest intermediary support team in protection, with over 120 field based business consultants now providing training, support and problem resolution to advisers around the UK.”
Mr Jeynes said that underwriting remains a key component to excellent service and PruProtect’s approach is to focus on making timely and sensible decisions and communicating openly with advisers.
He added: “A reflection of this common sense attitude is that only around 6 per cent of applications result in a potentially time consuming GP report. We are not complacent, or under the delusion that our service is perfect and free from mistakes. We have plans to continue to grow our support team – initially focusing on supporting wealth advisers transitioning to protection sales post RDR – and to revamp our online underwriting system.”
Skandia
Skandia says that it offers advisers an unrivalled level of support, which includes 80 regionally-based business consultants and a host of technical specialists.
Anthony Scammell, head of customer experience, explained that Skandia has been rolling out a service excellence programme at its customer service centre which is helping to improve its ability to provide tailored support to advisers and customers.
Mr Scammell said: “The programme has extended the opening hours across our contact centres and has introduced a feedback loop to highlight future improvements. We continue our ongoing drive to improve the quality of the documentation we send out and more recently a programme has begun to reduce turnaround times for key processes.”
Mr Scammell added that over the last 12 months Skandia has delivered numerous enhancements to improve the service advisers and customers receive.
“One of the key enhancements has been the first phase of a new platform interface that works in the way advisers work, transforming the way advisers do business with us, resulting in a more customer centric, logical and intuitive process,” he said.
Mr Scammell continued: “We have also launched an interactive risk discussion tool designed to support advisers and their customers during the risk assessment and portfolio planning process. We subsequently developed a risk discussion app for iPhone, android phones, and more recently iPads, enabling the risk discussion to take place in a single meeting at the customer’s home. This improvement to the application process saves the adviser both time and money, and improves the service the customer receives.”
