Fully bilingual, flexible platform for investment and other product types, and CANNEX integration option
Toronto, ON — November 19, 2004 — CoVirt announced the next major release of VirtGate today with enhancements to the VirtGate backbone that solidifies VirtGate�s already dominant position as Canada�s national life insurance industry commerce solution.
Tim Fitzpatrick, President of CoVirt, hit the highlights, �While over 100 small and medium size features are added each year to VirtGate, every so often CoVirt announces a major new release. VirtGate Release Version 6.0 is fully bilingual, with each user being able to toggle between French and English on the fly. This will have a great appeal to national accounts, and to the Quebec market. No longer will the Quebec life brokerages have to spread a large annual developmental cost over a small base.”
�We have also extended the underlying data models to accommodate the rapid addition of new product types, which we can now do in days� continued Tim Fitzpatrick. �Examples of product types are Individual Life, Group, Annuities, Funds, GICs and Disability Income. Beyond the new product type interfaces, there are many directions we could take to expand VirtGate�s features, but the most natural and synergistic direction is in the area of investment products. Often financial product distributors have two distinct entities — a broker dealer entity for mutual funds and an insurance entity. VirtGate Release Version 6.0 concentrates on the kinds of investment products that tend to be sold by insurance licensed advisors through insurance entity.”
Alex Melvin, President, CANNEX Financial Exchanges Limited commented that “CANNEX is pleased to announce that its data and information services are now available to VirtGate clients. VirtGate Release 6.0 enables users to import CANNEX data and information files directly into their VirtGate database. VirtGate users are able to import daily investment fund (including seg fund) prices as well as current interest rate information for GICs, Term Deposits, GIAs, RRSPs and RRIFs, mortgages and various loan products. VirtGate clients use this information to advise clients as well as update and prepare summaries of client holdings. VirtGate users subscribe with CANNEX directly and for more information should access www.cannex.com”
As to inforce values for life insurance, �For two years now, VirtGate has been accepting any kind of carrier data feed that our clients could cajole life carriers into providing�, Tim Fitzpatrick stated. �Typically these are pending or commission feeds, but we are slowly seeing a movement by life insurance carriers to making inforce life insurance feeds a priority. Such feeds will contain data such as a premium history, cash and paid up values plus updated owner and beneficiary information. This is necessary so that MGAs can consolidate client data for advisors from multiple suppliers.”
John Quirt, Manager, Distribution Technology with Empire Financial Group said “We have a new project underway to set up a feed to VirtGate focused on Wealth Management (Investments and Universal Life) data as a number of the MGAs we do business with use VirtGate.”
“When you put this together with the CANNEX investment values, you can see how the brokerage insurance entities will soon be able to provide their advisors with the ability to create a multi-carrier, multi-product-type client statement with updated values.� Tim Fitzpatrick said.
When asked as to why so many large distributors in particular have turned to VirtGate, Mr. Fitzpatrick explained that �Big distributors first and foremost want the best for their advisors and need the best to manage their enterprise. Secondly, they have an eye on the bottom line. Thirdly, they appreciate fast development from an idea to being in production. Large distributors seem to realize more quickly that it no longer makes economical sense to pay more, wait longer to get less. There was a time when nothing was more natural than to do-it-yourself, with individual distributors each building and maintaining a large, unique system. However such proprietary systems require at least ten times the time and monies to maintain annually compared to VirtGate. Distributors of all sizes are therefore turning to VirtGate to obtain the best system in the Canadian industry; they get it in a matter of days, and at a fraction of their current annual technology expense.”
“The entire perspective on how the industry builds, manages and deploys systems is changing. The key to managing any business – increasing sales and decreasing costs – is real time management information for everyone in the organization including advisors and branches and trade partners. VirtGate customers benefit from our shared technology approach and the vast amount of experience that we have in building and supporting such systems and from our extensive experience in the insurance industry itself.” concluded Mr. Fitzpatrick.
About CoVirt:
CoVirt supplies VirtGate, a total integrated solution for advisor and policy management, to a rapidly growing list of brokerages. VirtGate provides superior advantages that turn the brokerage web site into a sales and service pipeline, allowing organizations to focus on the fundamental core expertise that drives their success. VirtGate is much faster than typical internal LAN-based software and brokerages can tie as many offices, trading partners and users together as they wish � all with no additional user fees. VirtGate includes integrated online document management where any type of document may be posted to the advisor record, policy record, or to the public library within seconds. VirtGate is fantastically cost-effective, yet worry-free. All that is needed is a standard web browser and access to the Internet — nothing is installed on the user’s machine nor does the brokerage have to maintain a server. VirtGate increases efficiency immediately and allows brokerage�s organizations to better serve their advisors and customers. For more information, see www.CoVirt.com
