OPTIO is a revolutionary new approach to the regulated advice process which reduces both advice costs and compliance risks. Developed in consultation with IFAs and providers it has been tried and tested in the marketplace over the last three years.

At the heart of this new process lies the OPTIO Interactive Financial Planner (IFP). This is a financial healthcheck package designed for use by both consumers and advisers. The IFP combines a self-completion factfind with a set of powerful diagnostic tools, which identify shortfalls in a customer's long-term financial plans and educate the customer at each stage of the process. In cases where the customer uses these diagnostic tools on his own, he automatically completes a fully compliant factfind which he can send securely to an adviser. Our webservers then provide the necessary infrastructure for the adviser to download and read the factfind, so that he can provide valuable advice straight away.

The benefits of this approach are:

• The customer is educated, and feels more in control of the process,
• Persistency improves, as the IFP continues to make the case for product provision,
• A single call-centre can service a widely dispersed customer base,
• New business costs are radically reduced, and
• Compliance risks are reduced, both for the adviser and the provider.

The IFP generates large volumes of new business. In a recent trial 200 employees of a large company volunteered to use the IFP:

• Over 80% said that they would use it again and recommend it to their friends,
• 29% said that they would buy new products as a result of using the IFP, and
• 14% wanted immediately to talk to an adviser.

With its small systems footprint, easy installation and remote maintenance facilities, the IFP is ideal for distribution to large groups of consumers at low cost, either on CD or by internet download from a website. The separate factfind is returned as an encrypted XML file which can be interfaced easily into existing systems without significant development effort.