The Innovator Awards – 2008 Windows in Financial Services

Fidelity’s transformation of its document creation process, described on the previous pages, exemplifies ingenuity in the face of challenges resulting from shifting market conditions. Fidelity’s approach, of confronting hurdles by embracing and implementing advanced technologies, makes it stand out among its peers as a technology innovator. On the following pages are seven more companies that have been awarded 2008 Innovator Awards for their leadership in adopting advanced technologies. From customer relationship management (CRM) to Web services to mobile technology and more, these companies have harnessed technology to create new opportunities and position themselves for success in a highly competitive marketplace. Here are their stories.

Mobile Innovation: Bloomberg

Bloomberg has made its BLOOMBERG MOBILE service available through Windows Mobile devices, giving Windows Mobile users access to Bloomberg news, research, analytics, and market monitors in a wide variety of market segments. Using a password, financial professionals can also access messaging, their full contact lists and account details. Market alerts, set up via the BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL service, are also sent directly to mobile devices to help keep users informed of shifts and trends in the market. The service gives Bloomberg users more avenues for accessing Bloomberg data, news and information 24-hours a day.

Bloomberg has been developing software to provide customers with access to financial news and data on mobile devices for more than 10 years. However, in the last few years the company has seen a significant increase in the demand for this type of access to data, and in access to news and data through more of the 24-hour day. At the same time, the speed of wireless data networks and the sophistication of devices have made it possible to provide the data in more usable and meaningful ways. Currently, more than half of Bloomberg’s 300,000 subscribers have access to the Bloomberg Anywhere service, which gives them the ability to access the Bloomberg service from any PC or Internet capable device.

The particular application for Windows Mobile devices is a native application, which is installed on clients’ smartphones. The native application – as opposed to a Web-based service – gives Bloomberg the ability to provide a much richer user experience. The devices can store data in memory while the user is within data coverage. This data can be viewed and manipulated when the user is offline. Bloomberg can also “push” content to the device that is relevant to the user when news or market prices or urgent communications become available.

Bloomberg plans to steadily add new features to its mobile device platforms, including a consumer application that will provide professional level functionality to the individual investor.

CRM Innovation: VSK Insurance

VSK Insurance House, a leading insurer in Russia with 400 branches and 103 insurance products, has long put a priority on automation. In 2001, Military Insurance Company began offering its services under the VSK Insurance House name, and in the process modified its ideology toward a more client-focused approach.

In order to offer the comprehensive services it offers today, which take into account each client’s life goals and aspirations, the firm needed a CRM system that allowed it to see a complete picture of each customer. But VSK Insurance House wanted more than that from its CRM system. The firm also wanted to see into its internal processes for a complete view of its product life cycle and of the future quality of portfolios of contracts.

A longtime user of Microsoft products, the firm chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, and working with Microsoft Consulting, deployed the product so that it not only managed customer relationships, but also automated internal processes – essentially serving as both a client CRM and internal CRM system. The company’s continued growth meant that there are not only many products to match to a large client base, but also many sellers who the firm needs to manage in an efficient way. The system is being used to improve contact opportunities with customers, and also to ensure that managerial decisions are rapidly transmitted to the appropriate sales teams and properly executed.

Not only has the system found internal cost savings and ensured the quality of administrative processes, its Microsoft interface has been important in helping employees become familiar with the product quickly with little training.
“Usage of standardized technology, intuitively clear for VSK users, which look from an interface perspective as friendly Outlook extensions, demands the minimum expenses for training of personnel,” says Vadim Olrov, head of VSK’s development division. As a result, the project of automating centralized corporate sales for all subsidiaries was carried out within three months, he says.

Banking Technology Innovation: ARGO

As the market leader in technology-based solutions for the financial services industry, Dallas-based ARGO reaches customers in all 50 states with deployments in more than 30,000 locations. Its customers range from the largest national banks to regional banking organizations and also include specialty consumer credit providers. To help provide these customers with the quality and innovation they’ve come to expect, ARGO turns to its long-standing relationship with Microsoft, including a partnership with its Financial Services Business Unit.

“We’re a customer-driven company, and as a result, we use a Microsoft-centric development approach,” says Diana Hennel, director of product development for ARGO. From desktop to server, ARGO employs a variety of Microsoft technologies, including Internet Explorer, SharePoint, SQL Server Database, SQL Server Reporting Services and Analysis Services, Visual Studio for Development, Windows Server System 2008, and systems management tools. Hennel notes, “We find ourselves in a unique position by having so many touch points with Microsoft within our applications.”

ARGO converts these many touch points into real-world value for its customers, proving its concepts in the marketplace rather than the lab. An example of this added value is virtualization. As a business application innovator, ARGO uses virtualization technology in several key areas, including disaster recovery as well as development and testing environment management. Virtualization helps deploy software upgrades because it allows the simultaneous upgrade of an entire environment – across multiple machines – rather than an inefficient one-at-a-time approach. This innovation reduces customer downtime and minimizes the risk of running into configuration conflicts.

ARGO continues to work with Microsoft on new ways to extend technological innovation, actively collaborating with Microsoft Research and Development and product groups in significant project areas.

BPM Innovation: Broadridge

Broadridge’s Ascendis business process management (BPM) solution suite enables broker-dealers to streamline their operations by automating the identification, lifecycle management, decision-making, communication and resolution of exceptions and requests across front- and back-office operations. The high-performance platform provides accurate, reliable, and efficient business process solutions for brokerage firms, allowing them to integrate and automate common business functions across their enterprises.

The increased productivity and cost savings realized for those firms utilizing Ascendis have been dramatic. With Ascendis Purchase and Sales, one firm reports that they have been able to reduce annual write-offs from approximately $250,000 to $25,000. A second firm was able to increase trade volume by nearly 62 percent, without adding staff by using Ascendis to close trade breaks automatically through defined business rules. With Ascendis Margin, another firm reduced staff by approximately 75 percent over a three-year period resulting in approximately $2 million in annual savings. Ascendis allows clients to implement best practices by choosing business rules from its comprehensive rules engine.

The overall scalability and the modular design of the platform allows it to work with a firm’s existing infrastructure, while also providing the flexibility to allow businesses to add capabilities as their processing needs grow. Ascendis is back-office independent and can easily be integrated with a firm’s existing back-office technology.

The 16 solutions that comprise the Ascendis suite of applications include solutions to automate processes for brokerage operations departments such as purchase and sales, margin and credit administration, new account opening, account transfer, securities lending and borrowing, corporate actions and more. The solution suite, running on Windows Server 2003, includes SQL Server 2005 for data management; SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for real-time and bulk data loading; BizTalk Server 2006 for orchestration; and Microsoft Internet Information Services and the .NET Framework for the Web-based user interface. By employing redundant servers and services, the architecture is designed to operate 24×7.

The combination of technologies makes the Ascendis suite highly scalable, easy-to-deploy, interoperable, and cost-effective when implemented with any brokerage platform. Broadridge chose Microsoft as the technology foundation for Ascendis because of

Microsoft’s proven ability to run mission-critical data center applications and its cost-performance ratio.

Insurance Innovation: Insurance Technologies

Insurance Technologies’ ForeSight 5.0 software simplifies and streamlines the selling of life, annuities, critical illness, disability income and long-term care products. By giving agents the advanced tools they need to customize offerings to customers and producers across multiple distribution channels, it can transform the way a company’s products are understood, quoted, illustrated and sold. Users can create a custom-branded interface for each distribution channel, and can customize product rules and features to deliver a unique experience for each channel. ForeSight supports all steps in the selling process, including needs analysis, asset allocation, sales concepts, hypotheticals, forms generation, application processing, and group or multi-life cases.

The application manages all point-of-sale activities from a single platform, increasing the productivity of producers and improving agility and speed-to-market as well as reducing expenses. Its native .NET Framework 3.5 using Visual Studio 2008 Team System with Team Foundation Server, provides high performance on a mobile platform while providing users with a familiar style and a fast, flexible, and secure operational environment.

Disconnected desktop users are supported through ForeSight’s Console application which delivers the exact same functionality found in the Web service on the desktop with no Internet connectivity required. This is done using the same codebase, so the user sees the exact same behaviors whether on the Web or on the desktop.

Two-way case synchronization is supported for user data and automatic software updates are handled through ClickOnce. Rich integration options to related systems such as application processing, underwriting, and administration are provided through ACORD transactions and Web services.

Complex Event Processing (CEP) Innovation: Coral8

Coral8 Inc.’s complex event processing (CEP) software speeds the delivery of scalable, event-driven trading applications in capital markets. The software combines a high-performance architecture, familiar SQL-like development language, and enterprise-class server to deliver the fastest development and deployment of scalable CEP applications for algorithmic trading, tick-by-tick risk and position management, trading network analytics and compliance, liquidity consolidation and management, real-time pre-trade analytics, and other financial market applications.

Coral8’s partnership with Microsoft has not only helped speed deployment of innovative applications but has also enabled CEP applications to be delivered at the lowest cost to customers. Coral8’s native C/C++ implementation delivers optimal throughput and low-latency on Microsoft platforms. A native .NET and C# language interface enables easy integration of the trading applications inside the rapidly deployable Microsoft solution framework.

The high-performance database interface of the Coral8 Engine works natively with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to cache historical and time-series data, and asynchronously write results such as trade compliance reports, all without compromising application throughput. Coral8 adapters for Microsoft Message Queuing and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 enable easy integration with other applications for sending trading signals to order execution and management applications based on algorithms run by Coral8.

The Coral8 Excel Adapter provides easy integration with Microsoft Office Excel. In addition, through a partnership with Lab49, customers can build highly visual trading applications on Coral8 with Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Financial services customers benefit from rapid development, low cost, and reduced time-to-market.

Employee Benefits Technology Innovation: Unum

More than two years in development, Unum Group’s Simply Unum is being recognized as an integrated product and service platform that brings an unparalleled level of choice, pricing, flexibility, and ease-of-use to the employee benefits market.

Unum integrated several siloed legacy systems spread across different companies and completely re-engineered business processes from a product-centric to customer service-centric model based on a service-oriented architecture on the Microsoft software platform, using Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Visual Studio.

Designed specifically for the small to midsize business owner, Simply Unum enables businesses to easily buy and manage benefits online. It provides a base of group disability or life insurance coupled with voluntary benefits. With more than 28,000 product combinations possible, an employer can offer benefit options that best meet the specific needs of their workforce.

The wide range of benefits available on a single integrated platform produces Simply Unum’s small and midsize business customers with more options and less administrative hassle. For business owners, the system offers one-stop access to coverage to fit employees at different life stages. Its simple design and ease-of-use eliminates redundancy by allowing business owners to enter information and updates once for all plans. If employers so chose, employees can select and enroll in benefits online and can download material that explains their coverage. Business owners and their employees also have the ability to track claims online.

Further, the solution operates on a single technology platform, creating one path from benefit package design to quoting to enrollment to ongoing billing and administration.

As one of the world’s leading employee benefit providers, Unum helps protect more than 25 million working people and their families in the event of illness or injury. Simply Unum furthers the company’s philosophy of looking ahead at trends and challenges and delivering forward-thinking benefit programs to prepare businesses and their employees for the future.