New Business Checking

A major UK life provider working exclusively in the High Net Worth marketplace faced considerable remedial action regarding possible churning following a visit from FSA.  We were appointed to assist under a Section 166 and in collaboration with the client we agreed a project plan and methodology for tackling the remedial work, which was successfully presented to the FSA.  We established one team to check all new business and another to review a sample of past business. This required us to build case handling processes and a database to record MI.

Our approach was to help limit the work undertaken to that which was necessary and reasonable. We established a highly experienced and qualified team that checked an average of 120 complex new business cases per week and reviewed over 600 past business files.

Having prepared carefully verified MI for the FSA, we were able to identify the issues for the client but avoid an imposed full scope business review, as we demonstrated that investors had not been disadvantaged in the majority of cases.

We also assisted the client in identifying record keeping issues and new business processing shortcomings.

The collaborative approach adopted enabled the client and the FSA to be kept fully aware of the progress at all times, but also to have valuable input into the process and methodology as the project evolved. Additionally, the client benefited from our ability to provide expert resource, deal with fluctuations in workload and assist with all interaction with FSA.

Business as usual reviewing

The client is a third party SIPP Administration Company based in the extremely competitive job market area and was experiencing issues with staff attraction and retention. We were asked to assist the client with the following:

• The staffing issue led to a backlog of approximately 3,500 administration items developing within the company’s delegated department. These items ranged from simple address changes to complex drawdown triennial reviews. We were asked to supply a team of highly experienced and qualified case officers to clear this backlog. The team worked to aggressive targets and succeeded in clearing the backlog within the agreed timescales.
• A further backlog in the client’s Property department was then cleared. This backlog required resource that had previous pensions and property experience.
• Following the successful completion of the backlog projects, we were engaged to assist in the identification and collection of outstanding fees. This resulted in us identifying and collecting approximately £3m in fees outstanding to the company.
• The company were in the process of finalising development of a new IT platform and required the secondment of a number of key staff to assist in user acceptance testing. We were asked to provide a team of pensions experts to backfill for these staff which required our consultants to acquire the knowledge to take over key roles within extremely short handover periods.
• In addition to the tactical resource outlined above, we also supplied a number of Team Leaders and Interim Heads of Department to the business.