"I think it’s fair to say that portals are sometimes blamed for creating poor behaviours in the marketplace and that’s something that we want to squash."
- Warren O’Connell, Head of Business Development for Sourcing at Iress
In 2022, CIExpert announced a new partnership with Iress, hoping to streamline product comparison for advisers selling protection plans. For the first time, this integration enabled advisers to complete the entire journey of sourcing quotes, researching the quality of products, and making applications in one environment.
At the time, Alan Lakey, Co-Founder of CIExpert, said “Over the years, feedback from advisers has told us that a simple userflow and clear presentation of information are crucial in supporting them to convey to their customers the salient issues needed when dealing with some of the complexities involved with Critical Illness (CI) plans.”
Today, Iress has announced its enhanced integration with CIExpert. Described as “game-changing,” this two-way integration aims to deliver seamless analysis of quality & fair value for advisers, ultimately improving consumer outcomes.
This functionality is exclusive to Iress for the next twelve months and is available via its sourcing platforms The Exchange and Xplan Mortgage – it can also be added to an advice firm’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM), upon request.
“This new collaboration delivers a depth of integration that’s the first of its kind. We wanted to go beyond everything else that we’d done previously, or that already exists in the market,” explained Warren O’Connell, Head of Business Development for Sourcing at Iress.
He said: “To be able to deliver on that in just over twelve months is a great example of two research platforms not only listening to their customers but acting on what they say.”
Speaking with Protection Reporter, Warren said this two-way integration came about following a conversation with LifeSearch; “We discussed it during our Protection Forum back in March 2024. Less than twelve months later, we’ve delivered that collaboration.”
During the launch, Paula Bertram-Lax, Chief Operating Officer at LifeSearch, highlighted the need for systems to “talk with one another […] what our advisers need, it comes down to simplification. CIExpert offers that independent viewpoint so it’s been great to build on that.”
Recognising the comparison process as “vital” for ensuring recommendations match customers’ individual requirements, Warren said, “We also know it’s important to speed up both the recommendation process, to help advisers and brokers spend more time on value-adding tasks rather than admin.”
Alan Lakey added that the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Consumer Duty has added pressure on advisers to demonstrate that they’re recommending ‘fair value’, but “poor integration between systems has long been a major frustration for advisers, making this task unnecessarily complex and time-consuming.”
He believes this enhanced integration with Iress “creates a seamless connection between systems, enabling advisers to evaluate customer options more efficiently while ensuring that compliance support is centralised in one place.”
