Overview

Imago Front Office is a truly flexible and scalable solution for delivering information and reporting solutions for the pre, at and post retirement markets. Imago Front Office is  built around a common calculations and quotations engine to provide support for product providers, administrators, platforms and advisers in the provision of advice, product analysis and cost comparisons, illustrations, reviews and SMPI reports. Imago Front Office has a web based user interface allowing it to be deployed easily and flexibly. Imago Front Office can be integrated into portals and platforms as a calculation engine solution that is enabled through a web services architecture.

Imago Front Office is made up of the following components:

Analysis

Imago Front Office is an analysis tool allowing illustrations to be re-modelled, to view information on charges, income, fund growth, effect-of-deductions, lifetime allowance and more. You can manipulate or 'tweak' your illustration basis to instantly see the effect it will have on your pension arrangement - see how taking a smaller income, retiring later or deferring for instance going into drawdown will affect your fund.

Anuities

Support for anuity calculations.

Charting

Ability to display calculation results in a richer, more visual way than ever before. Web based graphics enable bar and column graphs, pie charts and line graphs to much more quickly and easily convey your clients illustration information.

Contributions

Enables user to enter multiple contributions both single and regular with different payment frequencies and tax free cash  (PCLS) percentages.

Critical Yield

Supports for Type A and Type B.

Drawdown

Support for Capped Drawdown and Flexible Drawdown.

Funds and fund charges

Enables the configuring of funds you use and any associated management charges. The user can select the funds the member would like to invest in and allocate a percentage to each fund as well as modify the charges for the fund/investment. Imago Front Office also supports fund-specific growth rates where needed, and funds can be logically grouped together to allow for easier selection when creating quotes. Fund definitions (including associated charges) can be easily exported and imported by system administrators to allow for configurations to be easily moved from a test to live environment.

Goal Seek

Instead of specifying contribution levels, Imago enables the specification of retirement income goals, Imago then works out the contribution strategy.

Integrated User Interface

The current version brings together all of the Dunstan Thomas front office products, including Illustrations, Reviews and Advisor tools and presents them as an integrated platform for pensions and investments professionals.

Member search facility

A search facility allows the user to find an existing member using his/her name or/and surname. This provides quick access especially when the system is data intensive.

Output

Output from the calculation engine can be delivered as a PDF or a full set of results from the calculation process can be delivered as an XML message or Excel file.

Product Analysis Tools

Imago Front Office provides a solution for product cost comparisons. The Reduction In Yield (RIY Plus)calculator was initially designed to support advisers in the process of moving legacy assets into higher performing, more versatile and diverse pensions offerings, and specifically to help them migrate legacy assets onto the most suitable platform. RIY Plus also supports providers in enabling them to monitor RIYs on their products against competitor offerings. In addition, providers are using Dunstan Thomas’ tool to run RIY checks before stimulating customers on their legacy products to migrate to newer and more attractive pensions offerings.

The calculator works by conducting a ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ facts-based calculation of the costs of different but comparable schemes. Once the calculation has been carried out the tool is able to generate a suitability letter for presentation to the client.

Product charges and administration charges

Capability  of utilising a wide range of investment types each with their own distinct charging structures. You can add as many or few charges as is required to define your product. Charges can be predefined with a default amount which can be modified on a quote by quote basis, or configured in a tiered structure. Charges can be set up to be applied either as an amount or a percentage of the plan value at the time of deduction. The frequency and timing of applying them can also be changed. This means you can have initial charges, monthly, annually, in arrears or in advance. Product definitions (including associated charges) can be easily exported and imported by system administrators to allow for configurations to be easily moved from a test to live environments.

Projections

Provides projections of benefits, funds etc using FSA rates as well as rates set to model the performance of a specific asset class.

Protected rights

Support for Protected Rights and Non-Protected Rights.

Protection

Enhanced, primary and fixed protection support.

Reports

The illustrations are produced in PDF format. Each illustration has a unique name and is stored on a server for future auditing and reference.

• Point of Sale illustrations
• Production of acceptance letters
• Production of post-sales Key Features Documents (KFDs)
• Customer requests for projected (what if) policy values

Result sets from the calculation process can be used either for further analysis such as graphing or can be integrated into other platforms to provide a constituent element of a straight through processing solution.

Reviews

Imago Front Office provides exisitng business review capabilities as part of Imago Back Office or as a stand-alone function that can be used as part of a third party administration system. Features inclcude:

• Annual allowance checks
• Lifetime allowance checks
• SMPI Reports
• Review reports
• Drawdown (USP)  to drawdown transfers

Security

Enables  an administrator to add, modify and delete individual user accounts. Each user logs in to the system by providing a unique username and password. Only registered users will have access to the system providing security to the application.

Single sign on

The platform has a configurable single sign on capability for integration into portals and web sites.

Straight through Processing

Imago Front Office supports web services to provide interfaces to other systems. The constituent components of Imago Front Office can be de-coupled to give a truly integrated solution. For instance, the underlying calculation engine is serviced through a web services interface which means that it can easily be integrated to other environments such as adviser and corporate extranets

Test Harness

Imago has over 500 different  test cases running different scenarios. These can be delivered automatically through Imago calculation engine for verification and compliance purposes. It facilitates the input of predefined test data into the calculations engine so the resulting data can be easily compared against a set of predefined expected results.

Tools

• Annuities calculator - enables the calculation of future annuity rates using the latest FSA mortality basis.
• Contributions levels calculator - Enables the analysis of contributions levels so that they remain below lifetime allowances, achieve a fund of a certain amount, or assessing the most appropriate contributions level for the level of income required.
• Drawdown income level calculator  - enables income levels to be modelled.
• Lifetime allowance calculator - enables lifetiem allowance limits to be modelled  with contribution levels and fund valuation adjustments.
• Projections analysi calculator - enables  charges, income, fund growth, effect-of-deductions, lifetime allowance and more to be modelled to provide what-if analysis.
• Tax free cash analysis - examine the merits of full versus phased drawdown, including the supportable levels of income and the relative tax-efficiency of each income vehicle.

Validation

Imago validates user input values as data is entered and as users navigate between screens. Additional validation is performed before a quote is calculated.

Users and Security

With the ability to group Imago users and hide quotes created by one group from another, coupled with the ability to assign different levels of authority to change data, Imago can be deployed centrally whilst still being able to service all of the differing requirements of your separate (internal or external) business areas.

White labelling

Imago Front Office supports web services to provide interfaces to other systems. The constituent components of Imago Front Office can be de-coupled to give a truly integrated solution. For instance, the underlying calculation engine is serviced through a web services interface which means that it can easily be integrated to other environments such as adviser and corporate extranets.