It’s no secret that financial services companies – banks, insurers, asset managers and the like – have had a challenging time over the past couple of years. But with growth now the focus of the

industry’s attention, new products will be needed. The debt-based culture of the last ten years is behind us and people want ways to accumulate wealth and minimize their tax liabilities. For financial services providers, getting the right products to market quickly is key to taking advantage of this changing market. And if you want to launch new products effectively, outsourcing is one option to consider.

Getting new, innovative products to the market quickly can be the difference between being a leader or laggard in the financial services market. The pressure is on to create and bring new and different types of product to the market. In a world where consumer’s needs are changing, financial services providers, (and their outsourcers and tech providers) find themselves having to revolutionise the way in which they introduce, and market their new offerings into the marketplace.

Although this has been difficult in the past, outsourcing now gives product managers and actuaries a new option to build their product portfolio, reducing the cost and time it takes for new product development. This also helps bridge the gap between product design and implementation, helping to get new products out faster.

So once you’ve built it, how do you sell it? New marketing strategies can encourage people to think differently about new versions of well known (older) products and could make the difference between a highly successful launch and a complete flop. For instance, now that consumers carry thousands of pounds worth of electronic equipment on them including IPods, laptops and mobile phones, protection products could be sold as ‘preserve your lifestyle’ rather than ‘preserve your life’.

Now, during the ‘post-crunch’ period, the weight of competition in the marketplace only heightens the pressure to get products available to consumers in the blink of an eye. Speed to market has been the deal-breaker in the ascent to the top of the market for companies in the past, most notably being Standard Life’s rise to dominance in the SIPP market a few years ago. Understandably, others such as Santander are now attempting to re-create this success through all of the means mentioned above.

The big question is, “how do providers speed up the process by which products are brought to market?” The answer is allowing skilled, strategically managed teams to handle the product development from end-to-end so that these products are created and launched efficiently - better known as outsourcing.

Outsourcing allows the more sophisticated types of product development strategies can grow and become more comprehensive to deliver improvements in product quality as well as how quickly it can be delivered to the market. A properly thought-out strategy for product development and product-to-market can make a real difference to customer retention and treating customers fairly.