F&TRC – Group risk offers future opportunities

With the advent of consultant charging, group risk offers a valuable opportunity for advisory firms to achieve significant additional income, research has found.

Independent financial services consultants, Finance & Technology Research Centre (F&TRC) has released its benchmark survey of group risk providers, on a range of different e-commerce services across the IFA market.

F&TRC said auto enrolment looks destined to create an increasingly competitive market in the pensions arena and will result in a situation where the majority of data necessary to populate electronic group risk systems should be readily available.

There is a major opportunity at this time for organisations building new systems to include not only the data for pension contributions, but to supplement these with the additional requirements to automate group risk.

Ian McKenna, Managing Director of F&TRC said: "F&TRC has not examined e-commerce in the Group Risk market since 2007. At that time what was available was very limited indeed and the Group Risk market is still a long way behind the rest of the industry.

"However, some providers have clearly made a significant investment in technology to bring this sector kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. It is clear that these firms are committed to continued investment to deliver further process automation and greater efficiency for the benefit of employers and advisers."

In total 50 different areas of group risk provider's current propositions were examined, including product options; quote flexibility, extranet services, new business processing and security.

The four companies who took part in the survey were Canada Life, Ellipse, Friends Provident and Legal & General.

The final overall ratings are:

Canada Life
Group Critical Illness eee
Group Life Protection eee
Group Income Protection eee

Ellipse
Group Critical Illness eee
Group Life Protection eee
Group Income Protection No product

Friends Life/BHA
Group Critical Illness ee+
Group Life Protection ee+
Group Income Protection ee+

Legal & General
Group Critical Illness ee
Group Life Protection ee
Group Income Protection ee