It was in 2006, following a comparison of competitors, that Hargreaves Lansdown awarded Stralfors a contract to produce client communication. Since then Stralfors has been responsible for the production and issuing of account statements, reconciliation notes and company bulletins.
“As we’re regulated by the FSA, the British Financial Services Authority, it’s very important for us that the supplier we choose has the necessary accreditation for information security as well as experience of work with similar clients in the financial sector,” says Peter Hargreaves.
Confidential information
Every year Hargreaves Lansdown issues thousands of documents that are regulated by the FSA. This communication updates clients about the returns on their investments and financial transactions, or they may receive other confidential information.
The communication includes account statements twice a year, as well as other ongoing communication during the year, such as settlement notes and company
bulletins. Peter Hargreaves explains:
“When a client concludes a share transaction, we have to send a settlement note, which must be signed and returned to us. We also issue documents about company bulletins to provide information about specific companies in which our clients hold shares. This is important communication, and it’s crucial that it is sent and delivered in time in order to comply with FSA regulations.”
In the past, the design and dispatch of this kind of material was carried out internally.
But as the company grew, theydecided to investigate whether an external supplier could take on this task.
“Our collaboration with Stralfors has given us the scalability required to issue an increasing volume of client material as our business has grown, and at the same time it’s contributed to keeping costs down. As experts in this field, they’ve been able to give us advice on various ways of saving money, and working together with them has been far more efficient than if we’d done the work ourselves,” says Peter Hargreaves.
Stralfors has also introduced a number of combined mailings and postage optimisation measures in order to save money and improve the client experience. “If a client performed more than one transaction on the same day, in the past we were forced to send several different settlement notes. Now these documents are compiled in one mailing, so we only need to send one envelope. Stralfors has helped us to make big savings on postage with the aid of barcodes for clients, symbols
that can be quickly and easily scanned by a machine to aid sorting,” says Peter Hargreaves.
Combined communication
Hargreaves Lansdown can also combine marketing material with other kinds of communication instead of sending it separately. In addition to printed documents, Stralfors provides a digital version of each document, which is saved in an electronic archive in Hargreaves Lansdown’s client services department. These documents are used for reference if client advisors receive enquiries and are also sent to clients who prefer paper versions. Stralfors uses its own unique camera system, SRM (Stralfors Reliable Mailing), which guarantees the maximum possible data integrity. If the system discovers a problem, data entry error or duplication, the envelopefilling
machine is stopped at once so that action can be taken. This guarantees that no mailings contain the wrong documents or are sent to the wrong clients.
“We must have good relations with our clients. So it’s important that no personal
information is compromised and that documents are delivered on time. If a client buys shares, he or she must receive the information from us within a given time limit,” says Peter Hargreaves.