Income protection provider British Friendly is to adopt Product Governor, a new ‘regtech’ solution to support financial services firms with their product governance.

Product Governor is a web-based solution which allows the embedding of a firms’ product governance framework in a digital format, with the aim of improving robustness and efficiency of the governance process, as well as providing a range of tools to enhance product governance processes.

It also supports firms moving towards a more dynamic data driven view of product risk allowing a more proactive response to emerging trends.

Product Governor supports governance through the product lifecycle and by digitising product information provides a firm wide view of product risk as well as effective task management capability to improve overall product management.

Claire Kelly, proposition director for British Friendly, said: “Product governance is a key part of product management and is increasingly important with the evolving regulatory landscape. However, processes across many financial product providers have relied upon word documents and spreadsheets to sometimes manage a large number of products. This makes it challenging to manage effectively.

“Product Governor is an effective digital solution that will alleviate these challenges and enhance our product governance process.”

Chris McNab, co-founder of Product Governor, added: “We are delighted to be working with British Friendly as our launch partner, a firm we know well and respect highly for their income protection expertise. We believe that product governance is an increasingly onerous task for financial services firms and can rely on inefficient manual processes, not always delivering effective outcomes.

“In launching Product Governor with British Friendly, we believe we can continue to evolve the solution, with the objective of providing a dynamic view of product risk and moving to prevention of negative outcomes rather than reacting to them when they occur.”