Top 5 UK IFA network, Thinc
Group was formed through a merger between Destini and Thinc in July 2005 and bought by Axa in 2006. Its offers a complete range of professional offerings for financial advisers.
One of Thinc's great strengths is the ownership and control of its distribution. The company has a total staff of around 1,000 with some 800 advisers, £2.5B of advised funds under management and £4B of annual lending (putting it into the top 5 mortgage firms in the UK as well).
One great challenge was to provide effective communication to the merged company's network of IFAs throughout the UK. Although the group had an extensive extranet, clear and engaging messages were needed to be broadcast to everyone regarding the merger, training, compliance issues, research and also new products from financial partners.
The solution
Mark Pittaccio of Thinc Destini introduces TD-TV to their employees
Stuff Multichannel proposed a private broadband TV channel dedicated to the above. The advantage being that people could view the information at a time that suited them. The channel would use the very latest video streaming and compression technology so that all users could watch the channel over the Internet with no additional hardware of software required on their PC.
A project plan was formed that that the launch date of 'Thinc TV' could directly follow the annual sales conference in order to re-enforce the impact of the merger, with key interviews shot by Thinc's senior management as to the merged group's strategy and direction.
Stuff also worked with Thinc's IT department to conduct tests to ensure that the user experience on launch date would be as smooth as possible with testing done throughout the group's locations viewing a test channel.
As well as specially commissioned Thinc TV content for launch date, this was supplemented by financial news and market/sector 'library' content to ensure that the channel launched with a core base of TV footage.
The result
Thinc TV launched to great success in September 2005 with Stuff conducting an email campaign to promote the initial programmes as well as providing management information back to Thinc Group as to who had watched which content and also provided second-line support to the IT support desk to resolve any user issues.
Thinc Group are now working with Stuff Multichannel to develop new programming content such as product and induction training, FSA compliance issues as well as Thinc TV becoming an integral part of their 'Working in Partnership' programme with financial product suppliers.
