How Ferret can help you understand and deal with the effects of benefit changes

Ferret Information Systems is the world’s leading company specialising in the application of technology to advanced benefits advice and information for the individual. We focus on areas linked to social welfare, assessment and support. In 30 years of innovation Ferret has grown out of a Citizens Advice Bureaux project into a multi-award winning company whose world’s first’s include the world’s first large scale roll-out of mobile technology in government – in 1988 - and the world’s first Web based benefits assessment system – in 1995.

Ferret specialises in holistic assessment of financial circumstances, coupled with a software development methodology which offers a high level of flexibility and rapid updating to reflect rule changes.

Ferret works in partnership with many companies and organisations using our expertise, and that of our partners, to develop effective products and services. For example our work with the Council of Mortgage Lenders in developing Fintal, the ground breaking tool for advice and compliance needs in lifetime mortgages, quickly established itself as the industry standard for this essential task.

Advisers

Ferret understands advice and advisers; we grew out of being advisers ourselves. Our systems and services are designed for the needs of those giving advice and for the needs of their clients and customers.

Authorities, networks, associations and organisations

We’ve seen the advice and information needs of individuals become more integrated with the services of the bodies that help them. Keeping the ability to serve individuals while supporting the management needs of larger services has been at the centre of our development strategies for our new products and services. Encouraging the use of appropriate technologies by such organisations to cascade the knowledge and capabilities through organisations and local areas offers enormous potential in mitigating the effects of benefit cuts and changes.

Individual advice systems

Our systems are designed to enable advisers to provide information to individual customers, using our predictive rule sets. This enables users to give advice and information not only about current entitlements but also to look ahead to the individual’s situation under new rules and schemes. The systems are available on multiple platforms including mobile and the Web, and also in variants for expert and generalist advisers or for customer self-use.

Data collection, transformation and assessment

For multi-agency and administrative working we have developed our own granular representation, agnostic to purpose, of a customer’s circumstances. This is not limited to any specific application software and is an extremely modular and extensible, structure which enables multiple assessments in one interview and is also designed to transform and aggregate the data into directly usable data for multiple back office systems or reporting engines. It makes use of a unique, user configurable, ‘push – pull’ model of customer driven dialogue entry for speed and accuracy in collecting rich data.

Sustainability and affordability

Combining our predictive income modelling, the common financial statement and bespoke elements and rules we are able to generate robust assessments of affordability and sustainability in areas such as new employment and house purchase or rental. The application of this to debt advice and arrears proposals is extremely powerful.

Workflow, embedding and batch processes

We are able to supply ‘black-box’ systems for embedding into other systems and applications but our systems can also stand-alone as batch processing engines through which complete customer sets can be run against changes in rules or rates.

Pilot and local

The modularity of our systems enables the easy introduction of pilot and local schemes for individual users or areas into otherwise standard systems.

Employment and HR

For employers, and employees, our unique ability to look ahead provides a real bottom-line figure for the overall income of employees from earnings, Tax Credits and benefits. Being able to see the effects of changes in rules, that will come into effect in the future, helps people to understand the situation that they will be in and to make plans with time to spare.

Specialist assessments

We have modules for CRAG, Fairer Charging, Disabled Facilities Grants and many other specialist assessments which can be integrated into our core systems or run stand-alone.

Consultancy

Ferret provides consultancy to companies, organisations and government on the impact of legislative and policy changes on their business and customers. Ferret’s Future Benefits Model (FFBM) is widely used by agencies and specialists needing detailed future information on benefit changes and their impacts.