The client
Sesame Limited (www.sesame.co.uk) is a leading supplier of support and research services to independent financial advisers (IFAs) and other financial advisers in the UK.

The challenge
The UK Financial Services Authority, which is the regulatory body for financial services in the UK, had mandated a significant increase in the compliance-checking requirement on the advice provided by the IFAs. Implementation of these high standards in compliance checking required increasing the company manpower, which would have led to a major cost increase. Hence, Sesame decided to look for a partner to whom they could outsource all manpower-related matters, recruitment and selection, training, management, quality control and the provision of management information. The aim was to build a scalable model that could be adapted to deliver other core operations of Sesame.

NIIT SmartServe (www.niitsmartserve.com) in India was Sesame’s choice to outsource this project, which serves as a business monitoring unit (BMU) for Sesame to check the quality of a significant proportion of the new business written by IFAs associated with Sesame. This quality control function ensures that the business checked is in accordance with regulatory, company and industry standards. The scope of the work included:

n Ensuring that a specified volume of business written by IFAs was examined and reviewed.

n Recording the status and outcome of the examination and review of the business written.

n Providing management information regarding the results of the review, the volume and spread of cases reviewed in relation to targets.

The solution
SmartServe deployed approximately 120 people on this project. The execution of the process takes place from NIIT SmartServe’s 560-seat facility in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi. The process aims to increase the monitoring and compliance checking capabilities of Sesame, and enables the company to offer its service to other IFAs who are not members of its IFA network currently.

Their solution was a combination of onsite and offshore development resources. The process migration was based on two parts: 

• Business monitoring unit: The BMU is a department that helps regulate the advice given to the clients of the IFAs. The BMU software, developed by the client organization, selects a case and allocates it to a reviewer. The case is checked to see if it is “compliant” or whether the advisor has to complete the case to make it “compliant”.
  Once the case is “compliant”, it is then filed away in storage.
• Offshoring of the work to India: This unit carries out two functions. One, it aims to increase the monitoring and compliance checking capabilities of Sesame. Two, it enables Sesame to offer its service to other IFAs who are not members of its IFA network currently. To set up this unit, NIIT SmartServe went in for:

n Hiring of staff.
n Co-coordinating with the training/certification agency in the UK to conduct the exam in India.
n Designing the training program to provide knowledge on the UK financial services markets.
n Implementing connectivity to the client location for access to the BMU application and image library.
n NIIT SmartServe trainers and client organization trainers jointly delivered the various components followed by on-the-job mentoring by client organization staff.

The scope of services provided by NIIT SmartServe includes:

n Recruitment of staff with appropriate skills or a clear potential to acquire the same.
n Training of staff to obtain a recognised UK-based certification for the financial services sector, client-specific process training and a highly supervised period of on-job training.
n Management of staff and workflow to deliver on SLAs. Key metrics include measures for the quantity, quality and turnaround of work.
n Quality checking of work prior to delivery to Sesame.
n Call management and query handling with a direct contact between staff in India and Sesame customers.
n Provisioning of the infrastructure for suitable work environments, reliable equipment and a link to Sesame’s systems in the UK.
n Management reporting.
n Provision of a business continuity plan and assistance with Sesame’s own business continuity planning in India.
n Negotiations with essential third-party suppliers.

The advantage
NIIT SmartServe has helped Sesame provide increased compliance checking without a major increase in costs. Increased compliance checking leads to reduced risk, which in turn, leads to reduced insurance costs.