Why do you describe Hansard as unusual?
We are unusual for two reasons. As far as I am aware we are still the only fully listed company on the Isle of Man, but we also come from a family business background.
While we are a listed institution, with all the corporate governance that goes along with that, we still retain the good things about being a family business, such as our long-serving, passionate staff.
Where do you operate and what products does Hansard offer?
The Isle of Man is the central hub, where the vast majority of our employees are based and where our IT development is undertaken for the whole group. The rest are spread between Dublin, Hong Kong, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo.
We are a regular savings, regular premium company. We used to do little in terms of single-premium sales but that is becoming a big proportion of our business.
Sipps and Qrops, which HM Revenue & Customs now calls Rops, were traditionally a very small part of our business but it is growing. It is only in the past two years, with the strategic changes we have been making, that that business has started picking up. About a third of our new business is single-premium-type sales, of which around half is Sipps and Rops.
We offer a different product in Malaysia, which goes through our Labuan branch, and when we had Hansard Europe we had many different products. What we offer now is very similar from one place to another. During the past two years every single product we have has been revamped.
We like to work with financial advisers and listen to what they feel could improve our products or what changes we could make to meet a need.
We are about to launch a new bond structure where commission can be sacrificed to leave only a small quarterly service charge in place. Brokers are starting to work out how they will run their business in the new regime, particularly in terms of transparency.
Do you mean the new mandatory commission disclosure requirement from the Isle of Man regulator?
Yes, it is still only at the consultation paper stage and there seems to be a focus on single-premium sales. The regulators want product providers to be more interested in and responsible for positive outcomes for policyholders. We think that is a good thing.
It is actually very rare for us to receive a complaint about commission. There is a lot of upfront disclosure. We would expect our clients to have a good understanding of what they are buying.
I worked in the UK in the 1990s when commission disclosure first came in. I do not think the market was overly affected by that change. Our view is that transparency is coming but we are geared up to handle it.
Who is the Hansard Global client?
Our core market would include some high net-worths, but really it is the mass-affluent and expat market. They have a fairly high disposable income and are building their wealth, so they have not yet moved into the high net-worth band but that is what they aspire to.
It is not just the typical British expat working in the Middle East anymore, our clients are a lot more diverse. They all have the same basic needs, they want to save in a currency that suits them, they are probably working somewhere that is not going to be their long-term home and there may be reasons they do not want to save their assets in that region.
People keep talking about all the challenges this industry faces but what we forget is that we sell to a need, to a group that is actually growing in terms of size and wealth, who live longer and want to save for their long-term security in a place where they feel their investments are secure.
How important is technology to Hansard?
We do not outsource development. A quarter of our workforce is IT-related, so we are in control of our own technological destiny and are not bogged down by legacy issues that can be common in big companies.
Online is critical to our future. People are going to get so used to doing things online. You have got to have that facility in good shape. We feel fortunate that we do but it is something we have been working on for 15 years.
We can issue a case within hours of it arriving online. Our system will not let users proceed unless all of their information is input, it is straight-through, end-to-end processing that is adding huge efficiency within the business.
The digital age is with us and we feel well placed to take advantage of the latest developments. It is still an unproven case that products, particularly international ones, will sell themselves.
