Tag: Case Studies

Case Study: Harbour Investments

Case Study

“After a long look at systems that were available to us, we realized that WealthServ was the only software that really gave us everything we needed in one package. iPipeline Canada listened to what we wanted to achieve and helped us get there.”
-Rhonda Meyer, COO

Harbour is a full-service broker dealer providing support for brokerage and direct business. Their philosophy values long-term relationships and looks to provide outstanding, personalized service to their representatives.

Harbour was looking to streamline its back office and improve service to their representatives. However, the challenges of using multiple back-office systems prevented them from reaching this goal:

  • There was much duplicated effort entering the same information into multiple systems
  • Valuable staff time was spent on data scrubbing and reconciliation rather than assisting representatives
  • Representatives had to sign in to multiple systems to access the information they needed
  • Harbour faced limitations in delivering vital information on a timely basis to representatives.

Solution

Harbour replaced their multiple systems with WealthServ to provide one central, integrated solution. iPipeline worked with Harbour to configure WealthServ to suit their specific needs:

  • Streamlined commissions processing
  • Enhanced compliance features
  • Consolidated investment portfolios
  • Representative access
  • Easy-to-use Client access portal
  • Electronic document storage

Results

The major result for Harbour was that they were able to significantly reduce the amount of staff engaged in mundane back-office tasks:

  • Effort on commissions processing was reduced by 75%
  • Data scrubbing effort was reduced by 80%
  • The data entry team was reduced from 6 people down to 3

“We have high-caliber people and it was great to reassign them to higher value tasks such as supporting representative sales” said Meyer.

In addition to reducing work effort, Harbour was able to meet their target of providing information to representatives within 24 hours of receiving it. “It used to take us a week to compile the information for representatives, now we can do it within 24 hours.” Meyer continued, “The feedback I get from our staff is ‘I don’t know how we managed before’, that’s the difference WealthServ has made.”

Features

  • Clearing and Direct commissions processing
  • Automated data scrubbing
  • Compliance processing with “red flags”
  • Integrated CRM
  • Easy to use document imaging
  • Purpose-built client access portal
  • Online representative access
  • Statements consolidated across multiple sponsors and product lines
  • No software or hardware to buy and install

Case Study: Transamerica Life Canada

Case Study

“iPipeline was a vital component of our ADB rider campaign. It enabled Transamerica to deliver the communication and control to our partners and clients we needed to make this kind of marketing activity viable.”
-Doug Paul, SVP Sales and Distribution

Research had shown Transamerica that the majority of their policyholders received no regular solicitation as the independent distribution force, quite rightly, concentrated on the minority of their clients who provided the majority of their income. Transamerica saw enormous potential in utilising direct sales and marketing to reach the “virtual orphans” in its client base. However, they also wanted to ensure that their distribution partners i.e. MGA’s, Advisors and National Accounts were provided some control over the direct campaigns and were communicated to effectively, whilst deploying direct marketing campaigns.

Solution

iPipeline provided a portal for all 17,402 advisors and 236 MGA’s affected by the campaign. This was seamlessly linked to Transamerica own Distributor Resource Centre (DRC) so no separate sign on was required. The portal provided advisors with:

  • A full, media rich campaign briefing highlighting the benefits of the program
  • The ability to opt out their client base from the program
  • Customised reports to show recent purchase activity, in-box activity and how much commission had been earned, restricted to their customer base only
  • A customer service system, allowing automated forwarding of leads and the escalation of actions on to the appropriate advisor’s inbox.

iPipeline was also the “control console” for the campaign, providing to Transamerica:

  • Opt out reporting
  • Up to date information so they could answer inquires as if they were a part of the associated advisor organization
  • Tracking of campaign results against expectations

With the campaign complete, iPipeline delivered the analytic insight into ‘how the campaign went’. With a rich data warehouse established, Transamerica was able to analyze the response rates by customer demographic and current policy holdings. This gave Transamerica the opportunity to improve the next campaign. They were also able to cross tabulate those responses in relation to the National Accounts, MGA’s and advisors and so isolate the key predictors that drove the response.

Results

Transamerica Life Canada (TLC) deployed iPipeline to manage its first large-scale direct campaign. The campaign was a great success:

TLC was able to reduce their commission levels down to 25% of first year revenue, increasing their gross margin by 500%. Their very first campaign yielded almost two million dollars of incremental revenue, or 25% of their revenue that year. It also increased the average number of products per customer by 10%. Independent advisors used iPipeline to see and maintain control over the marketing activity to their customers. Of the third of a million policyholders marketed to, advisors chose to opt out only 700 of their clients. Direct campaigns are now a regular feature of TLCs marketing activity, driving a significant percentage of their annual revenue.

Case Study: ReMark

Case Study

“iPipeline has been our partner in the development of the POP strategy. They combine enterprise class system skills with a deep understanding of the financial services industry. iPipeline represents the state-of-the-art technology for the design, execution, analysis and refinement of multi-product, multi channel marketing.”
-Brad Smith, President, Americas

ReMark, the world leader in policyholder marketing, saw erosion in its developed markets. While able to execute excellently and deliver the best in class results from its core programs, ReMark recognized the need to be more strategic with its clients and take a broader role in driving their profitability. It was clear that technology had a role to play in ReMark’s evolution.

Solution

ReMark and iPipeline have partnered to address the needs of North American Insurance and Bancassurance market. ReMark has adopted iPipeline Continuous Marketing as the heart of its Policyholder Optimization Process (POP). iPipeline is the technology that enables ReMark to bind its customers’ partnerships and implement a strategy of driving a consistent stream of upgrade and cross sell offers.

Results

ReMark now presents the POP strategy to all of it new clients. The strategy is at the heart of increasing the tenure at its flagship North American clients and has elevated ReMark’s pitch to top tier insurers and banks.

  • Simplifies the extraction of data from legacy policyholder systems
  • Provides user-friendly mining and segmentation tools
  • Provides campaign management tools to allow ReMark to effectively manage and adapt campaigns for its clients
  • Gives ReMark the real-time insight into campaigns as they execute to maximize revenue and retention for their clients

iPipeline is now in operation at several of ReMark’s key clients, including CIBC Life and Transamerica Life Canada.