THE Co-operative Insurance Society has announced proposals aimed at strengthening its home service sales channel and providing the basis for its continued success within its evolving multi-channel sales capabilities.
Despite other companies withdrawing from home service in recent years, CIS has always maintained that the channel can play an important role in providing financial services to millions of UK households.
CIS is the largest remaining home service provider with over five million customers and the proposals form an integral part of the modernisation programme announced in July last year.
The new proposals include:
* A new streamlined salesforce management structure, which would see the merging of two of the three existing layers of sales management. However, any displaced managers would be offered roles within the financial adviser network where no redundancies are planned
* A new sales support structure, which would see the development of 18 regional sales offices for financial advisers across the country, each employing a small number of staff.
*The removal of administrative tasks and collections from financial advisers' duties
* A revised remuneration structure
Paul Hewitt, acting Chief Executive of CIS's parent company Co-operative Financial Services, said: `CIS financial advisers remain an important part of our future plans for CFS as we develop support for our customers across a range of service channels that include face to face, the ?phone and internet.
`We believe face to face advice, delivered professionally in the home, can address the worrying levels of financial under-provision which continue to exist amongst large parts of the population.
`We have always taken great pride in the strength of our existing customer relationships and it is this which enables us to go forward with a contemporary home service proposition, when so many of our rivals have been forced to abandon theirs.`
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