Retail Distribution Review – will it destroy your UK Insurance business?

Retail Distribution Review – will it destroy your UK Insurance business?

Recently we’ve been in discussion with the leaders of other major insurance companies here in the UK on the potential impact of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) on their businesses.

We are convinced that the impact of the Retail Distribution Review will be the most damaging regulatory change to hit your business, fundamentally because UK new business volumes are set to collapse as a result of RDR implementation for the following reasons:

• UK new business volumes will decline by 15-20% through evaporating consumer demand and shrinking availability of advisors (IFAs and tied)
• Your margins will decline considerably as you are forced to make up for lost volume through marketing to difficult distribution channels, such as Aggregators and Price Comparison sites, at considerably reduced margins
• Your existing cost structure will be unsustainable given the decline in new business levels

Retail Distribution Review – Catalyst for huge shareholder value destruction

 

Retail Distribution Review Meltdown

We have run a number of alternative scenarios through our ‘Monte Carlo’ simulation of the UK insurance market. In the ‘best possible’ outcomes (estimated probability 25-35% ) we see little impact on profitability and shareholder value of insurance businesses here in the UK.

However in our base case forecast (probability 35-55%) we predict that the overall impact on your business will be the destruction of  30-70% enterprise value. For those businesses with substantial debt this will mean virtually all their market value will be lost.
Our base case scenario predicts:

• Overall UK new business volumes will decline by 15-20%
• New business margins on policies written post RDR will decline by 35-40%
• Your new business volumes will decline by 20-25%

But it’s not going to happen?

The most obvious response is that it’s just not going to happen. Clearly industry feedback in an ideal world to the FSA will lead to the main requirements of the Retail Distribution Review to abolish commission payments to be watered down and implementation delayed to the distant future. But are these credible assumptions?  A more realistic assumption is that the Retail Distribution Review is going to be implemented in more or less its current form in the UK.

Perhaps a more credible hope is that like water finding the sea, the current demand for financial advice and insurance product purchase will somehow remain unchanged and that these new business volumes will eventually find their way to Insurance manufacturers. I would counter that ‘hope is not a strategy’. Our view is based on:

• The average fully loaded cost to provide financial advice in the UK is £250 per hour
• The average UK consumer is only willing to pay up to £50 per hour for advice
• It will not be possible with the average UK consumer to close the £200 gap (between cost and willingness to pay) by charging fees based on the total portfolio asset value
• Many customers will purchase simplified products from their banks, use online ‘execution only’ services and ‘aggregators causing margins to collapse
• As a consequence, overall UK new business volumes will fall by 15-20%

Life after the Retail Distribution Review – What’s the way forward?

While the bulk of Insurance companies are tied up in the massive changes associated with delivering the requirements of Solvency II and the Retail Distribution Review, we believe a small number of companies will be able to take advantage of the new environment to transform their businesses to have a winning business model whilst others will struggle to survive.

To put it simply, to become one of the few winners in the post-RDR world you need to undergo a major business transformation to deliver a much lower cost business model by:

• Cutting your operating costs by 30-40%
• You will need to develop a much low cost business model with that delivers a high volume direct-to-consumer capability at low-cost (exploiting Internet, mobile and new emerging distribution channels)
• Implementing radical changes in your business model, IT systems, product design and channel strategy to give you competitive advantage in the post-RDR environment

Who are we to offer you advice?

I should say at this point we’re a boutique, specialist firm focused exclusively on working with the leaders of service businesses to deliver successful business transformations. We have no ‘conflicts of interest’ in attempting to sell you on audit, mammoth technology projects or outsourcing.

You may wish to listen to some of our clients discuss how we helped them overcome their most difficult strategic challenges and emerge successfully. You can listen to and download personal interviews with:

 

Real estate tips

Here are 5 author tips for working with a factor. Interpret “Bang The Rules For Excavation With A Actual Class Medication With These 5 Tips – Part 1” for the primary 5 tips.

1. You are due to signal a buyer’s broker approval with most echt acres brokerages. The buyer’s harmony is a bridge between you, the medicine, and the genuine realty workplace. This concordance looney relation between all parties and explains the duties of each. There are two different buyers? broker?s agreements, and report and nonexclusive customer broker agreement. Micturate careful you asked what the conflict of each is. If you do not greeting to communicatory the preparation, don’t ask to bonk homes shown to you. If you are not satisfied with the touch the acquire cancellation fees in their provision but most echt class brokerages faculty declare the instrument upon your bespeak.

2. Wee certain that you e’er ask for a foretoken authority planning. Most states by law required agents to dispense buyers an medicine revealing. A workplace or bourgeois revealing is fair that, a revelation exclusive and not accord. A safety medicine way is the unexcelled and most preparation typewrite of bureau. Your bourgeois represents you and the medicine owes you property sphere.

3. Let your functionary couple what you look and what you’re expectations are. If you expect the agent to get you around to all showings, let him screw. A lot of agents instrument provide this delivery, but in my expanse because of a assets issues, this is not recommended and all buyers are asked to correspond the agents at our duty. Be careful to inform the broker how to transmit with you. Do you opt the sound, e-mails, or matter messages? When should the medication ring you and how oft? When you are superficial for base be practical some your goals and your timeline for discovery a lodging. Supplying your factor with feedback is really main and if you’re not mitigated say so.

4. Achieve trustworthy you believe everything before you clew any forms or contracts. If you do not realize anything in the contracts soul your medicine justify it to you. That is their job. Agents because they utilise with the contracts all the dimension may not imagine near explaining everything to you in fact. If you do not understand anything in the sicken, ask the agent for the explanations until you realize and are slaked with every. You also demand to harmonise that realtors are not attorneys and cannot ingeminate the law. If you necessity eligible advice on any employ attain trusty that you consult with an attorney at law.

5. Alter trustworthy you are prompt to purchase a domestic. You do not penury a true demesne medication if you are not primed to buy. You can see susceptible houses without an medicine, telecommunicate any database medicine to simulation a accommodation, but let the organization broker experience up foremost that you are exclusive superficial around. Be trusty and don’t activity a existent class medication’s experience if you are not in a condition to buy a internal now. If you’re rightful region. When superficial at homes allow your children at bag with opposite association members, friends or lease a babysitter. Looking at homes with your children along can be rattling trying. Attain trusty you love your change itemise of things that you condition in the lodging, and a table of things that would be overnice to bang but not necessarily needful. And the most fundamental target, egest certain you know your checkbook with you. If you regain that is presented to the vender.

Buyers mostly condition to realise that concrete estate agents feature families and lives to living the corresponding as they do. Most realtors put a lot of hours of line in quotidian and do not greet any rectification for their instance until a dealings actually closes. Courtesy their second and slatey convert.

Toronto Real Estate

Toronto real estate is a truly global and cosmopolitan market. Since the city has half of its population as non-native born, it supports one of the most diverse set of peoples from all over the world. Toronto is the most populated city in Canada and was ranked the most expensive city to live in a 2006 survey. However, the Economist survey ranks it in the top most livable cities in the world. This has attracted many people across the country to buy a piece of the Toronto real estate.

Opportunities For Toronto Real Estate Agents

The Toronto real estate market offers a variety of properties for interested prospects. The city comprises of both the high rise skyscrapers and the old Victorian style houses. While the commercial property is concentrated in the Financial District, there are hundreds of affluent residential colonies in the old city of Toronto. The neighborhoods of Yorkville, Rosedale, The Annex, Forest Hill and Casa Loma feature several upscale Toronto homes, luxury villas and condominiums.

If you are a Toronto realtor, then you face strong competition in an outrageously expensive Toronto real estate market. And if you are a new real estate agent trying to set your services apart from the other established Toronto realtors, then you have an uphill task. However, virtual home tours technology can help you immensely in differentiating your company from others.

• Real estate virtual tours are the avant-garde real estate marketing practices
• A virtual tour gives you the power to showcase your Toronto homes to prospects in a completely hassle free manner, while saving your time and money in making site visits and without compromising on the reality of the experience.
• Virtual real estate tours can help to convert an “I will think about it” prospect to “I want to buy the house” prospect.

Toronto Real Estate Virtual Tours

If you are interested in making Toronto real estate virtual tours for your company, then DigitalTours.ca is the best provider to do it. As a real estate agent, wanting to market Toronto homes, you get a range of services from DigitalTours.ca that helps to give a sharp edge to your marketing efforts.

• Video Tours:  These tours are highly effective in increasing the selling potential of your Toronto homes.
• 360 Tours:  These tours can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere in the world and are very effective in increasing the number of conversions.
• Slide shows:  These high quality images of the property are shot from the most appealing angles and give your prospects a superlative experience of the house.

You can also order a host of other real estate marketing services from DigitalTours.ca that help you to achieve your goals in the growing market of Toronto real estate.

Calgary Real Estate

Calgary real estate scenario is one of great opportunity and potential. Being the largest city between Vancouver and Toronto, Calgary is a popular destination for ecotourism and winter sports. It is also a place of great natural beauty as it lies in between the Canadian Rockies and the Canadian Prairies with two rivers flowing through the city.

Calgary has been ranked as the 10^th best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2009 and the cleanest city in the world by Forbes magazine in 2007. This makes the Calgary real estate properties highly sought after by many people who wish to settle down in this beautiful city.

The High Demand for Calgary Real Estate

Calgary realtors are faced with demand from two sources. One is the existing Calgary residents who wish to buy more property and the second is residents of other large cities like Toronto and Vancouver and even Edmonton who are interested in purchasing Calgary homes. While it is relatively easy to attract the attention of local prospects to your services, it is extremely difficult to get the out station prospects to consider your good offers and deals.

It is possible that there are Toronto prospects willing to pay more for Calgary homes as compared to what you might be able to get from Calgary buyers. But the question is how you will find them? The only solution lies in making your Calgary real estate properties available for viewing using virtual home tours on the internet. This will allow your prospects from other cities to view all the Calgary homes in your listing without having to visit them in person, at least during the initial search stage.

Calgary Real Estate Virtual Tours

Calgary realtors can definitely benefit from the use of virtual home tours to market their Calgary real estate. These virtual tours are extremely effective in attracting the prospect’s interest and in marketing Calgary homes in the most appealing manner. You can develop guided video tours to highlight the most attractive and enticing features of the house or you can develop highly interactive 360 tour that give complete control to the prospect in moving through the virtual home tours.

DigitalTours.ca is in the business of helping Calgary Realtors to

¨       Attract more prospects for their Calgary homes

¨       Increase the selling potential for their Calgary real estate listing

¨       Develop highly targeted real estate marketing campaigns using virtual home tours technology

¨       Provide their prospects with cutting edge interactive 360 tours

And support them in all their real estate marketing needs to succeed in the opportunity-rich market of Calgary real estate.

Vancouver Real Estate

Vancouver Real Estate

Vancouver real estate market offers some of the most beautiful properties in the whole of Canada. Vancouver is known throughout the world for its high “Quality of Living”, with The Economist giving it the first rank in a 2009 global survey. It therefore attracts more and more people every year who desire to make it their home. So it is no wonder that the Vancouver real estate market is the second most expensive real estate marketing in North America.

This coastal city offers some of the best scenic views with the North Shore Mountains on one side with the snow clad Mount Baker and Sunshine coast on another with a beautiful Vancouver Island. The city has been planned taking in to consideration the requirements of amenities and preservation of the natural environment. There are other initiatives that pursue the creation of parks and community centers and aim to make the Vancouver real estate properties more affordable.

The Challenge for Vancouver Real Estate Agents

Since the Vancouver real estate marketing is highly competitive, the challenge for Vancouver realtors is to market their services in the most innovative manner. The way they underscore the features of those Vancouver homes that they are trying to sell has a great bearing on their success.

Gone are the days when you would take every prospective buyer to visit each one of the Vancouver homes in your listing. These days, prospects demand a lot more from Vancouver realtors. They want to evaluate several options before they make a decision. Obviously, going by the traditional means, this would mean greatly increasing the customer acquisition cost. However, with virtual home tours technology, this problem can be easily overcome.

Vancouver Real Estate Virtual Tours

Vancouver real estate virtual tours is the answer to saving on costs and time while at the same time not compromising on the prospect’s experience of the real estate property. By offering a virtual home tour, you can give your clients an almost real experience with guided video tours or interactive 360 tours. These tours can be accessed on the website and can be seen any number of times. You save time and money since you will need to visit only those Vancouver homes in which the prospect shows more interest after watching the virtual tour.

Our job at digitaltours.ca is to help you develop those fascinating and eye catching virtual home tours that will help you to impress your prospects and make you a leader in the Vancouver real estate.

BC Real Estate

BC Real Estate

BC real estate market is one of the most active real estate markets in Canada. In large cities like Vancouver, Victoria, Coquitlam, Richmond, Nanaimo, Kelowna and Penticton, there are many people selling and buying property every day.

If you are a BC real estate agent dealing in BC property or BC homes, then one of your most important tasks is to market the property to achieve its maximum selling potential. You need to take your clients to visit different properties and point out their most attractive features. However, taking a prospective buyer physically to every house and to show him all the properties of interest in all of BC real estate is a time consuming affair.

Showcase BC Real Estate On Your Computer

Using virtual home tours technology, you can now showcase all of BC real estate to your clients directly from your computer.

• Show your prospects a pre-recorded video tour that takes them through a guided walkthrough of the house and points out its striking features. A video tour allows you to display several properties to your client without leaving your office. You can visit the property only when the buyer shows a serious interest.
• Develop an interactive 360 tour of your most prized properties in BC real estate and give your clients an opportunity to visit the house virtually from the comfort of their homes. The 360 tour gives an almost realistic experience of visiting the house with full interactive control using the computer mouse.
• Make your property seller happy by developing a video tour or a 360 tour to maximize the selling potential of his house.

BC Real Estate Marketing with digitaltours.ca

As a BC real estate agent, you can market BC homes and BC property using our advanced virtual home tours services. You do not have to develop virtual real estate tours for all the properties you are selling but can choose simple slideshows for some and video tours for others while selecting 360 tour for the prominent ones. Fortunately for you, all of our packages include all 3: virtual real estate tours, photo slideshows, and video tours.

It is very simple to get your BC real estate virtual home tours made at DigitalTours.ca. Contact us via phone or email and we will confirm the time of the photo-shoot or video recording. You can also avail of a range of supplementary services like marketing your property on Craigslis, uploading the video tour on YouTube and creating a DVD of the tour. You can rest assured that we will give you the best real estate marketing solutions for marketing your BC real estate.

Virtual Home Tours

Virtual Home Tours

Virtual home tours are becoming the norm in real estate marketing. Realtors across Canada are offering virtual home tours to their clients in order to improve their services.

A virtual tour gives the viewer a complete picture of the property right on his computer without having to make a physical visit. It helps save time for both the real estate agent and the prospective buyer and also helps to evaluate several options and decide faster.

3 Types Of Virtual Home Tours

1. Photographs: This is the simplest way to display the property to the buyer. The house to be sold is photographed from all angles, from the inside and the outside and the photos are uploaded to the site from where they can be seen. This is the most cost effective option but is limited in the sense that it only shows the angles from which it was photographed. It is possible that the photographer has only chosen to select the best angles and the best views.
2. Video Tours: Videos are the next level of sophistication in virtual home tours. In a video tour, the house is recorded on video as the real estate agent talks about its various features. This is a far better option than simple photographs because you get more detailed information from the voice over which you don’t get from the photos.
3. 360 Tours: These are the most high-tech of virtual home tours which give you an interactive experience of the house. Using hyperlinks and mouse clicks, you can virtually explore the house on your own. You can move from the living room to the bedroom, climb the stairs to the attic, look around the kitchen, look at the floor and the ceiling and move out into the front garden. 360 tours give you the ability to view any room in a complete 360 degree circle as if you are moving your head and looking around the room.

If you are a real estate agent marketing Vancouver Real Estate, Calgary Real Estate, Edmonton Real Estate or Toronto Real Estate, you need to offer some kind of virtual home tours in order to stay ahead of your competition.

Virtual Home Tours at digitaltours.ca

DigitalTours.ca is a leading real estate marketing company in Canada that develops virtual home tours for Vancouver Realtors, Calgary Realtors, Edmonton Realtors, Toronto Realtors, and Ottawa Realtors. You can use our services to develop high quality video tours, interactive 360 tours and several other related services to give your clients incredible virtual home tours.

Virtual Real Estate Tours

Virtual Real Estate Tours

Virtual real estate tours are high tech real estate marketing tools which help property sellers and real estate agents to market their homes to prospective buyers. These virtual home tours can be accessed from the internet using a personal computer and give the buyers a rich experience of the property without having to visit it.

Why Virtual Real Estate Tours Are Becoming Popular

1. The internet provides a simple, easy to use platform for property buyers to search for their desired homes. There are many property listings and real estate portals which can help the buyer begin his evaluation.
2. More and more buyers are going online to search for real estate. The high cost of traveling to a location makes the online search a convenient option for most buyers.
3. Technology has made it possible to develop virtual real estate tours that give an almost real life feel of the house. While it is possible to visit the real house only once, virtual home tours give the prospective buyers the joy of exploring their dream house as many times as they want. It has been observed that a virtual real estate tour increases the probability of the buyer actually making the purchase.

Why Choose DigitalTours.ca For Your Virtual Real Estate Tours

1. You get a range of options to choose from for your virtual real estate tours – photo gallery, video tours, 360 tours, and a host of other ancillary services.
2. You get high resolution, full screen virtual real estate tours that enhance the marketing potential of your property.
3. You can access the virtual real estate tours from multiple places – the digitaltours.ca website, your personal website, a public video sharing site like YouTube or we can even make a DVD for you.
4. You get prompt service and the highest quality standards in recording the virtual real estate tours. We assure you that with our professional service, we will make your property appear highly attractive, enticing and appealing to your customers. We achieve this by capturing the most desirable and superior features of the house from the most attractive angles.

If you are one of the Vancouver Realtors, Calgary Realtors, Edmonton Realtors, Toronto Realtors, or Ottawa Realtors, who wishes to climb up to the next level of real estate marketing and surpass your competition by giving your clients the most advanced services, DigitalTours.ca would be glad to help you develop your virtual real estate tours.

360 Virtual Tours

360 Tours

360 Tours are a kind of virtual representation of real estate designed to give the viewer a real feel of the property without actually visiting the site. These virtual tours are developed with actual photographs and video recordings of the real estate and encoded to be accessed via the internet.

360 Tours are a special kind of virtual real estate tours wherein you get a 360 degree panoramic view of the entire property including the rooms, doors and windows, entrance, front and back yards, parking and even the neighborhood.

360 Tours For Real Estate Agents

If you are a real estate agent, you can use 360 tours to give your clients a virtual experience of the property you are selling. Your can show your clients multiple properties and give them a chance to decide which ones they like and want to shortlist for their purchase. We have seen that more than half the buyers want to visit the location after they experience 360 tours.

Once you get the virtual real estate tours developed from us, you can showcase the same property to multiple clients and save time. Whether you are one of the hundreds of BC realtors, Alberta realtors or Ontario realtors, using 360 tours technology can help you to distinguish yourself from your competitors and give your clients a cutting edge experience.

360 Tours For Property Buyers

If you are a property buyer, interested in Vancouver homes, Calgary homes, Edmonton homes or Toronto homes, 360 tours can help you to evaluate several options without actually visiting the location. So if you do not like the kitchen layout or the back yard, you can save time by not visiting the house.

You can not only show the real estate virtual tour to your spouse and children but also to those friends whose opinion matters to you. And you can do all this from the comfort of your home using a simple PC and internet.

The 360 Tours Advantage

1. Interactive: You can use your PC mouse to move inside the virtual tour. With simple clicks, you can move from one room to another, enter the kitchen and bathroom, see through the window, and get a view of the house from all angles.
2. Zoom: You can zoom in to get a closer look and zoom out to get a wider look at the rooms and the views.
3. No Software needed: There is no special software required to view these virtual tours. You simply need a flash pluggin which can be downloaded free if it is not already present in your browser.

At digitaltours.ca we offer to develop real estate virtual tours for Vancouver Realtors, Calgary Realtors, Edmonton Realtors, Toronto Realtors and Ottawa Realtors. It is our constant endeavor to provide the next generation of real estate marketing to our clients using 360 tours.

Real Estate Virtual Tours

Real Estate Virtual Tours

Real estate virtual tours are the cutting edge in real estate marketing. Nowadays, many real estate agents in Canada are offering these virtual home tours This is because there are an increasing number of buyers who are searching for property online. And those realtors who are able to provide a virtual tour on their site have an advantage over others who are simply providing a list of the real estate properties and photos.

Real estate virtual tours are virtual walk through of homes and properties that give buyers an almost life like experience of moving through the house. These tours cover the entire layout of the house including the living room, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, the front parking lot and the backyard. You can see the exact colors of the walls and the general cleanliness of the house.

Why Realtors Must Offer Real Estate Virtual Tours?

1. You will be able to attract more clients to visit your site if you are offering real estate virtual tours of the properties you are selling.
2. Your clients will be able to access the real estate virtual tours 24 hours a day and as many times as they want. They can even show it to their family and friends.These tours will help your prospective buyers imagine themselves living in the house and help them reach a decision faster.
3. You save yourself as well as your buyer time by not having to take them personally to visit the site. You need to visit the home only when buyers have evaluated and short listed those houses which they have liked and would like to visit.
4. You can choose to provide different types of virtual home tours depending on their requirements and your marketing budget.

Real estate virtual tours can be simple slide shows of the property or can be elaborate video tours or can be the highly interactive 360 tours.

What You Get At Digitaltours.ca

At digitaltours.ca, we specialize in making high quality real estate virtual tours for BC real estate, Alberta real estate, and Ontario real estate. We have many loyal clients among Vancouver Realtors, Calgary Realtors, Edmonton Realtors, Toronto Realtors and Ottawa Realtors.

At digitaltours.ca, you can give your clients a real estate virtual tour from our website or your website or YouTube or simply in a DVD. Simply contact us from our website or make a phone call and we will help to you to market your real estate properties using the latest real estate virtual tours.