Financial Services IT specialist partners with Cobent to help FSA regulated organisations improve training and competence at the heart of the sales process
10/22/2008
Focus Solutions partners with Cobent to provide an integrated Training and Competence module to the Financial Industry as part of its focus:360° offering helping to reduce the levels of risk across the sales force whilst helping to improve the advice given to clients.
LONDON, UK - Focus Solution Group Plc, a leading provider of proven enterprise solutions to the financial services market, is making it easier for customers to automate their training programmes, through an exclusive partnership with Cobent. Focus has assisted many UK leading financial organisations including 8 out of the top 10 UK Life & Pension providers, major bancassurers including the likes of HSBC and Barclays and a number of significant wealth managers, mortgage networks and IFA firms to streamline and automate their sales processes in a compliant but engaging fashion.
As part of meeting FSA ‘Training and Competence’ standards, Cobent’s ‘Learning Compliance Suite’ (LCS) was selected and integrated with the Focus flagship product – focus:360 ̊, to provide clients with a way to create, deploy, track and manage training of advisers. The Focus branded LCS module within the focus:360 ̊platform is an example of the flexibility and robustness of the Cobent system to meet a variety of business models, and was chosen for its web-based platform, configurability and performance.
Ensuring that personnel are proficient and qualified to provide services within the financial market space is a must for all regulated organisations. Through Cobent’s LCS, focus:360° now provides the infrastructure to enable users to efficiently and cost effectively automate and manage training activities, helping to comply with increasing regulation and avoiding the need for paper based systems.
Frank Murray, Focus Solutions’ Chief Technology Officer commented “After comparing the market’s top-end learning management systems, we identified the Cobent LCS as the best-of-breed. Not only are we able to quickly meet a functional-gap in our product, we are able to provide our customers with a fully-featured system without compromising our overall quality. Cobent are experts in this field and we are excited about the future and opportunities that this partnership will provide.”
Howard Sears, Cobent’s CEO said: “We are delighted to announce the partnership with Focus Solutions, who are very successful within the financial market space. Focus Solutions understand the importance of helping to improve standards in the industry and have stepped in to offer their customers a solution to help manage training compliance from a single platform. This opens new business opportunities for both parties and will assist in the growth of our companies”
Focus Solutions is continually growing, and looking to take the focus:360 ̊solution internationally to the rest of Europe and the US. As a result of LCS’s configurable and robust design, the user-interface has been translated into a number of European languages, as well as US English. Commenting further Murray said “We feel confident about taking the module abroad. LCS’s easy configuration, coupled with their excellent support structure means we can trust Cobent to facilitate and support in the growth of our training and competence offering”.
With Cobent’s LCS, Focus Solutions has yet another angle to drive sales and differentiate itself from the competition.
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Notes for Editors
About Focus Solutions Group plc
Focus Solutions Group Plc is an established and proven supplier of enterprise solutions to the financial services industry in the UK, Ireland and more recently across Europe.
Focus has delivered over 100 complex front office projects with multiple integration points and partners to a blue chip client base including 8 out of the top 10 UK Life & Pension providers, a number of leading bancassurers including HSBC, Bank of Ireland and Barclays as well as significant wealth management players such as St James’s Place and a number of mortgage distributors and lenders.
The technology truly enables straight through processing whilst providing an engaging client and adviser experience to submit and service business electronically whether it’s in a branch, direct to the consumer or intermediary, in a client's home or via a call-centre. A true multi-channel proposition aimed at providers and major distributors across the regulated financial services sector.
focus:360° is at the core of all client implementations providing a single, agile, multi-channel technology platform. Focus has brought together three key areas of expertise; software, consultancy and service delivery. This totally integrated approach means clients can distribute any product across any channel, at the same time they can maintain an enterprise-wide view of the customer value and risk.
For further information on Focus please visit www.focus-solutions.co.uk or contact marketing@focus-solutions.co.uk to arrange a demonstration.
About Cobent
Cobent is a leading provider of Learning Management Systems (LMS), and has assisted many organisations throughout the UK, Europe and US in meeting training and regulatory compliance needs; including DSG International, Barclays, CIPFA, Norwich Union, and AAH Pharmaceuticals.
Cobent’s ‘Learning Compliance Suite’ (LCS) is a fully compliant, web-based application that provides organisations with the necessary tools to easily manage elearning, class-room and on-the-job training programmes. Cobent’s system is highly configurable to meet the most demanding business requirements and robust enough to deliver exceptional performance, security and reliability.
For further information on Cobent please visit www.cobent.com or contact marketing@cobent.com to arrange a demonstration.