National Friendly has gone live with Iress’ Exchange portal service to drive growth in its over-50s Life Assurance and Income Protection products.

The Bristol-based mutual society has selected Iress’ quote and apply portal for financial professionals, The Exchange, to expand the distribution footprint of its protection offering.

Dave Miller, Iress’ executive general manager, commercial, said: “We’re delighted to partner with National Friendly on its first foray into the portal space. With over 38,000 users and covering all major providers, The Exchange will enable National Friendly to rapidly drive growth.

“We’re looking forward to increasing that pace of change even further as new products go live in the coming months.”

Oliver Jones, National Friendly’s head of sales & marketing, added: “Iress will allow National Friendly to scale up and expand our distribution capabilities. The Exchange covers a large part of the market and gives us the ability to offer a wider range of products to a wider range of people. In addition, at National Friendly we want to work with people that have the same values as us.

“We pride ourselves on our relationships both with our customers and our partners and Iress clearly has the same philosophy. We’re looking forward to a successful partnership.”