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Bluerock Views
Bluerock is a specialist Financial Services Management Consultancy. We combine deep content knowledge with many years of experience delivering complex and challenging change. Our seasoned consultants are equally comfortable dealing at Executive level or rolling their sleeves up and delivering hands-on results.
Below are some of the issues we are currently discussing with our clients....
Operational Risk in the Supply Chain
With an increasing focus on cost, efficiency and transparency, the area that often gets neglected is the risk inherent across complex supply chains. Many companies are looking to re-negotiate sourcing contracts but how many truly understand the inter-dependence across their suppliers and businesses. A risk based portfolio view is a vital tool in managing a business. More..
Swine Flu
The World Health Organisation has declared the recent swine flu outbreak to be a "public health emergency of international concern" and warned that it could spark a global pandemic.
Bluerock consultants have helped a number of clients develop specific plans for pandemics, such as SARS and avian flu, and generic plans for coping with the reduced availability of staff. Our work has included drawing up quarantine policies for those travelling back from affected areas, identifying critical staff and critical processes, facilitating home working and re-negotiating work area recovery contracts to allow staff to work from suppliers' offices in the case of transport disruption due to the absence of train services. For more information call Simon Pearce on 0207 213 9760
Life and Pension New Distribution Models
The retail life and pensions distribution landscape is shifting as market reforms such as RDR and the adoption of new technologies take effect. The dominance of traditional routes to market is increasingly being challenged with the growth of direct channels and Bluerock has a track record of working with clients to look at new and innovative ways of doing business in this space.
Sourcing as a "Must Have" Skill
As more businesses rely on a variety of 3rd party technologies and services to deliver their propositions, the management of those relationships become critical to the success of the enterprise.
Embedding TCF
With many firms already labouring to demonstrate compliance (in March 08, 87% of the firms tested failed the MI and Governance deadline) this further scrutiny and the potential for substantial fines, increases the pressure on the industry.
Product Innovation
Many product innovation processes become slow, cumbersome and suffer from lack of cross functional alignment. By adopting a more radical iterative process these barriers can be broken down and a more flexible and nimble approach can be achieved.
Current News
Towers Watson
The announcement of plans to merge Watson Wyatt and Towers Perrin, with significant planned cost reductions, is an indicator of the problems faced by investment and benefit consultants in the current market. In the UK, Watson Wyatt has a held a dominant position amongst FTSE 100 firms, particularly in the golden era of defined benefit schemes. Towers Perrin has a smaller footprint in the UK, but has been a thought-leader in some areas of employee benefits and reward. In 2005, TP entered into a JV with EDS to create a new HR Outsourcing entity, recognising the sub-scale nature of TP operations globally.
The "new" focus on 3 segments - Benefits, Talent and Rewards, and Risk and Financial Services - will continue to see downward pressure on revenues and margins as corporate clients disintermediate benefit consultants and reduce their dependency on actuarial service providers. After the recent Mercer-Callan coupling was called off, the investment consulting market remains fragmented and individualistic as ever. Competition in other areas comes from the advisory arms of audit firms, providers (such as Fidelity) as well as specialist HR and recruitment players. Attempts to build added-value services such as employee communications and general management consultancy have proved difficult and remain insubstantial relative to the whole.
How the market reacts to the prospects arising from this deal will be interesting, even if the partners of the two firms stand to gain financially.
Latest RDR update released
The FSA has published the latest paper on the RDR today - see paper
The regulator says the annualised costs of implementing its reforms amount to £140 million over five years. This represents around 0.3% of annual gross new business premiums or 1% of industry profits. It says there may also be 'short-term costs' as IFAs leave the business and higher costs for smaller investors as IFAs unwind cross subsidies. There will be a new dividing line between independent and restricted advice which will encompass a wide range of collective investment products, including investment trusts and structured products. Restricted advice It appears, however, that the term independent can be maintained by advisers operating in specialist areas such as retirement planning rather than for all products. The Basic Advice regime and execution-only sales are unaffected by the proposals.
The emphasis on appropriate qualifications, removal of commission bias and transparency in the customer proposition remain. The industry has until October 30 to comment with an end 2012 implementation deadline.
Bluerock partners with Award winning web technology company
Bluerock and Vuture are collaborating to take their unique marketing tool to the financial services market. This innovative web based platform allows users to create and manage all of their marketing materials online at dramatically reduced cost and increased speed to market.
Click here for more information...
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Part of what we can offer our clients is the insight and knowledge of the markets, borne of practical experience of the projects and clients that we works with. As a result we periodically publish articles on aspects of the market in which we have particular insight. If you would like to receive these papers in advance of their general release, please provide your details above.
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