Distributors ‘would welcome' new entrants into the protection market to integrate new business processes, research has found.
A survey by finance and technology consultancy F&TRC has revealed strong demand for a deeper and more consistent approach to integrating new business systems across the protection market.
Currently, providers operate with significantly different systems to one another and distributors must simply follow whichever process each provider wants them to, the research highlighted.
If providers fail to act collectively to make new business processes easier in future, the research suggests the market is open for new entrants to streamline the industry to the needs of distributors.
Ian McKenna, managing director of F&TRC said: "A complicated market creates plenty of opportunities for new entrants to offer advisers the joined-up services they need to process business efficiently. In a bid to create individual competitive edge, protection providers are collectively making themselves more difficult to do business with.
"The platform developments that have taken place in other financial markets could be deployed to address the system integration issues we face in today's protection market. Our research shows new players looking to enter the market with technological innovation to streamline protection would be warmly welcomed by distributors."
Andy Walton, protection sales director at Intrinsic Financial Services said: "We see it as important to deliver an efficient and cost effective process to our advisers, there is a lot providers could do to improve current processes and we have been pleased to be involved with work to help document this."
