The UK’s financial intermediary market has undergone a number of significant changes over the last few months as the FSA has taken over regulation of the mortgage and insurance industries in addition to its investment industry regulatory role. This has resulted in rapid cross industry regulation with intermediaries from each discipline being able to offer additional investment, mortgage or insurance advice.

In addition, the changing intermediary marketplace sees the creation, dissolution or merging of intermediary companies or networks almost on a daily basis. We often hear comments such as:
"We know that our intermediary database is incomplete and out of date, but we have no means of identifying our areas of weakness"

Matrix-Data offers a unique solution for our clients by combining our core data solutions services with the only complete database of the UK’s financial intermediaries. This allows our clients to unlock the value within their own databases, as well as confidently segment the entire marketplace.

Background
Kensington Mortgages provides specialised mortgages for people who fall outside the strict lending criteria of traditional mortgage suppliers. Founded in 1994, the company achieved plc status in November 2000 and became the first stock exchange listed company in this specialist sector. By the end of October 2004 Kensington Mortgages had lent more than £7.4 billion to over 82,000 customers.

The mortgage intermediary market faced its most significant change for decades in November 2004 with the advent of "M-day", the date from when all intermediaries selling mortgages would have to be regulated by the FSA. To maximise the business opportunities that such a shake-up would inevitably bring, notwithstanding their basic need to remain legally compliant either side of "M-Day", Kensington Mortgages needed to undertake a complete overhaul of all their internal and external systems and their various disparate sales and marketing databases. Matrix-Data was required to integrate a multitude of data sources, from a mixture of separately held legacy systems, with Kensington’s existing CRM system. This produced a single client view that could be used across all aspects of the business.

Results
Our skills working with CRM data, honed from 20 years of experience within the financial intermediary market, meant that Matrix-Data was ideally placed to help Kensington Mortgages with this project. Using the Matrix Financial Intermediary Database as the cornerstone for the initial clean up, and consolidation of their multiple legacy systems, we added value to their existing database through a variety of data enhancement tools, and plugged the knowledge gaps in their database with our own Mortgage Intermediary data.

Working hand in hand with their Market Intelligence department over a 6 month period, the company has undergone a smooth transition from multiple legacy systems to a single intelligent customer view, enabling them to unlock the knowledge and value needed to grow their business.

For more information about our comprehensive range products and services for customer and business intelligence please see out website www.matrix-data.co.uk . Alternatively please contact us via email info@matrix-data.co.uk or call 020 7074 1200.