There's no place like home

The future of online financial services systems was looking bright back in 2000 with virtually every offshore life company and bank having web-based systems under development. But the subsequent market downturn and retrenchment within the offshore industry has left us only marginally advanced some five years later. Initially, the target market was to develop extranets that would allow intermediaries to interface with product providers, and these systems would gradually be expanded to allow private clients to access product information either direct from providers, or via their intermediar...