Pershing LC, a member of BNY Securities Group and a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Company Inc., is relaunching its Subscribe no-transaction fee annuity program, replacing in-house technology with software developed by Blue Frog Solutions, Inc.

“At Pershing, while we have built a lot of systems in-house, we are often in search of best-of-breed providers. We found that, really, in Blue Frog. For a variety of reasons we decided it was time to upgrade and relaunch. This will give us the new functionality and bells and whistles necessary to process the business,” said Mitch Bell, director at Pershing.

Subscribe, an automated order entry and processing system for both fixed and variable rate annuities, was first launched in 1996 with in-house technology developed in connection with leading carriers at the time. Today, the service is accessible through NetExchange Pro, Pershing’s online brokerage platform, which is used by 76,000 investment professionals around the world.

Among the factors that swayed Pershing to select Blue Frog was its strength in regulatory compliance.

“A variety of different regulations have been imposed on the industry. One of our goals is to give users tools to help them navigate the regulations they face,” Bell said. “That was something we were really looking to do through the relaunch.”

The Blue Frog technology that will power the Subscribe system will provide automated order entry, streamlined processing of annuity transactions and automated form generation in addition to compliance tools to help users with regulatory oversight.

The system was built based on the .NET Framework, using Microsoft technology and leveraging industry standards such as those of ACORD and the DTCC to help it track regulatory changes, according to Brad Levine, CEO of Blue Frog Solutions.

“It’s a solution that bridges the gap between the carriers and distributors. Annuities are regulated on a state-by-state basis. It’s not a security in the traditional sense, it’s a contract and those nuances create a uniqueness to this financial instrument in terms of how things are communicated,” Levine said. “To us, Pershing has an important place in the value chain in terms of representing the majority of independent contractors out there, and this product provides their clients with an easy way to automate these processes.”

Pershing represents more than 70 percent of the market share in the independent contractor space, which typically includes financial organizations whose parent companies are well known insurance firms, according to Bell. Banks are also a large portion of Pershing’s client base. Pershing offers NetExchange Pro, and along with it the Subscribe annuity service, to broker dealer clients who then entitle the independent contractors they serve to use the product. Users can access the product through HTML or a Windows-based version.

“Processing annuity transactions has historically been very challenging to handle. This will be a differentiator for our clients to be able to offer this service to their investment professionals,” said Bell.