Insurance & Technology is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Channels

04:15 PM
Connect Directly
Facebook
Google+
Twitter
RSS
E-Mail
50%
50%

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:26:56 -0500

Moderate tech expenditure reduces risk of The Standard's entry into the individual financial planning and investment management space.

As Standard Insurance looks to expand its investment management services, the company has found that the technology investment is among the least risky aspects of the venture. The Standard ($1.9 billion in annual premium revenue) entered the investment advice business with the formation of its StanCorp Investment Advisers division in 2000 to provide investment advice to clients of the carrier's employer retirement plan business.

Through the new business, The Standard aims to compete with independent investment advisors. "What we bring to the table is the same close-knit relationship with a professional who meets face-to-face with the client as often as the client wants, but it's backed by a robust institutional quality research process and a smooth-running operational support system -- and of course that's made possible by technology," says Julie Grandstaff, VP and managing director, StanCorp Investment Advisers.

StanCorp intends to expand its business nationwide, largely through acquisitions of field offices, according to Grandstaff. However, operations personnel will be located in the company's Portland, Ore., headquarters. "The two halves of the team have to look like a cohesive unit to the client, so it's tremendously important that both parts of the team have all the information available on the client," Grandstaff adds.

To address that need, StanCorp invested about $40,000 in the desktop-based client relationship management system Sage CRM (Sage; Scottsdale, Ariz.). "A professional in the field can assign a task to the operational person, and the operational person can enter updates," Grandstaff says. "If the client calls either part of the team, either party can answer questions about where things stand."

Following the acquisition of a Portland-based financial advisor operation in 2003, StanCorp also implemented Schwab Performance Technology's (Raleigh, N.C.) Portfolio Center (in the solution's earlier "Centerpiece" version) portfolio management system for tracking client activity. "It allows you to very efficiently set up target allocations for the clients so that it's easy to see when [their portfolios] need to be rebalanced," Grandstaff remarks. Schwab Performance Technology also helped StanCorp develop a secure client Web site that enables uploading of client holdings so that both advisors and clients can view portfolio information online.

Limited Investment

Implementation costs were kept low by the out-of-the-box customization features of both the Sage CRM and Portfolio Center products, Grandstaff claims. "It was a very inexpensive implementation," she says. "We were able to take advantage of existing capabilities on the part of the vendors."

StanCorp expects to see a return on its technology investment within five years. "We believe the business plan is very robust," Grandstaff says. "The capital investment is not huge, so the risk of failure is not significant." --Anthony O'Donnell

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio

Register for Insurance & Technology Newsletters
Slideshows
Video