The Ark Financial Leads has launched as a lead provider across the mortgage and protection markets, with plans to begin serving the pensions and investments markets later in 2011.

The firm aims to differentiate itself by providing advisers with telephone qualified leads. It says it will use techniques such as phone number and address verification technology, interpreting socio-demographic information, and credit profiling. It will provide advisers with a choice of leads which have either been generated online or been through a telephone qualified process.

The Ark Financial Leads is the result of two complementary firms joining forces: The Ark, a marketing data business has teamed up with Engage Client Solutions, a provider of client audit and client acquisition services to the financial services market.

The new proposition will be headed up by Jonathan Barrett and Andrew Rosser, former head of sales and head of operations at Leadbay. Both left the lead provider in May 2010.

Jonathan Barrett, director of The Ark Financial Leads, said: “We’ve been researching the market and building this proposition for nearly a year