Insurers link for £26m portal venture

Misys has signed a £26m deal with UK insurers Friends Provident, Norwich Union and Scottish Widows which it believes will revolutionise the financial services industry.

The three firms will take a £9.8m stake in Misys' Independent Financial Advisers' (IFAs) portal AssureWeb, on top of paying an additional £16.2m for IT services.

Brian Wilkinson, head of communications for Friends Provident, claimed the move was a leap forward for the industry.

"We passionately believe technology can transform the work we do," he said. "This website is an example of straight-through processing, which means policies can be set up without any manual input.

"We're expecting lower costs, improved efficiencies and the ability to deliver much better products to users."

The deal will see Friends Provident, Norwich Union and Scottish Widows take a 40 per cent stake in the AssureWeb portal, which is designed for use by independent financial advisers (IFAs).

IFAs will be able to sell products such as pensions and investment bonds to consumers and execute them directly over the web.

Currently, AssureWeb only allows IFAs to research and compare prices of different service providers.

A spokesman for Misys said: "The financial services industry is currently plagued by paperwork. This system will eradicate this problem."

The site - to be further developed over the next three and a half years - should reduce the time it takes to process complex financial services from weeks to days.

"Clearly this is an important deal for Misys, but it's also an important deal for the financial services industry as a whole," the spokesman added.