TOUCHSTONE FINANCIAL ANALYTICS LAUNCHES SALES PANEL ALLOCATOR TOOL

Giving product providers ‘real-time’ control over sales and distribution strategies

London, May 2012 - Leading wealth product and IFA intelligence specialist, Equifax’s Touchstone Financial Analytics, is tackling the challenge of sales resource management for financial products with an innovative new interactive tool. The Touchstone Sales Panel Allocator is designed to give life, pension, investment, platform and mortgage providers dynamic control over how their sales resources are used to manage their intermediaries.

Touchstone Sales Panel Allocator gives Sales Managers and Directors complete control to add, delete, amend and model sales panels based on business volumes, market share, geography and new business potential. Operating in ‘real time’ and capitalising on the complete Touchstone IFA database, it also provides total flexibility to be tailored to how product providers segment their intermediary market.

Geoff Greensmith, Strategic Development Director, Touchstone Financial Analytics believes the new easy to use Sales Panel Allocator tool will play a vital role in managing under-pressure sales resources in a difficult economic climate.

“In previous roles as Head of Sales for a large Life Company and Sales Director for a Fund Management Group, I used Touchstone products to segment the IFA marketplace and decide on a relevant distribution strategy. I know how crucial it is to ensure sales personnel are properly focused on working with IFAs that have a business model that fits the company’s product and fund propositions. Being able to manage the sales resource simply and effectively has, therefore, been the driving focus in the design of the Touchstone Sales Panel Allocator.”

“I firmly believe this is a market-leading initiative that will give product providers and fund management groups greater control over their distribution channels, simply by giving them better control of their sales resources.”

The Touchstone Sales Panel Allocator gives providers a number of key benefits including:
 

• The facility to instantly add new recruits, so that they have clear sales panels to focus on from day one
• The ability to temporarily reassign IFAs when sales people leave
• Sharing of IFA accounts between sales people where dual calling is needed

The intuitive ‘drag & drop’ functionality of Touchstone Sales Panel Allocator means IFAs can be moved between panels quickly and easily. Sales management can also test a variety of scenarios before committing to change.

In addition, the ease of use of the tool means potential sales team structure changes can be modelled before full implementation. Plus panel decisions can be based on a number of key business factors including volumes, IFA support and size of potential opportunity, as well as geography using proprietary Google Maps integration.

“This latest development from Touchstone Financial Analytics demonstrates again our understanding of the business issues for manufacturers and distributors in the IFA market”, concluded Geoff Greensmith. “Sales Panel Allocator helps to make a real difference to the sales and distribution strategies of our clients.”

To find out more, customers can contact Touchstone on 01236 722 000 or email touchstone@equifax.com

Ends

About Equifax

Equifax is a global leader in consumer and commercial information solutions, providing businesses of all sizes and consumers with information they can trust. We organize and assimilate data on more than 500 million consumers and 81 million businesses worldwide, and use advanced analytics and proprietary technology to create and deliver customized insights that enrich both the performance of businesses and the lives of consumers.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Equifax operates or has investments in 18 countries and is a member of Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500® Index. Its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX. For more information, please visit www.equifax.com.

Touchstone Financial Analytics and IXI

Touchstone is the UK’s leading provider of strategic IFA intelligence to financial product providers, delivering powerful benefits to its users. It operates a shared investment product data exchange with information provided by over 90 of the UK’s leading financial services companies. It also operates the MyTouchstone database which is powered by the collective sales data of 77 major product providers, fund managers and platforms and inputs from thousands of IFAs to help IFAs understand how they perform compared to the other IFAs in their post area and across the UK.

Equifax Inc acquired US wealth data specialist, IXI, at the end of 2009. The IXI Corporation has been directly-measuring consumer wealth in the U.S. for the past 15 years.

The unique combination of Touchstone Financial Analytics and IXI is set to bring an unparalleled understanding of consumer wealth and purchase behaviour to the UK for the first time.