Ashton's dedication to providing the highest quality in service has led to long-term partnerships with leading industry corporations. Sample projects include:

Consultants from Ashton participated in project planning and issues resolution discussions with the AEL upgrade team, both remotely and onsite, contributing to AEL’s successful implementation.

As a result of the positive experience, AMEX made a decision to outsource the majority of their key development and enhancement projects to us.

Working remotely from our offices in Norwell, MA, we have successfully completed several important projects, on time and without cost overruns.

Key development projects that we have delivered to American Express as part of our successful partnership since our initial involvement in the Y2K project include:

• Enhancements to Agent Compensation
  A large project involving a number of changes to the way agents are compensated for particular blocks of business, including automatically generating Payments and/or Chargeback entries based on a variety of criteria. We also delivered system modifications to provide for streamlining the process of adding agents and the associated compensation data to products while also allowing for a flexible method of defining compensation details.



• The Ability to Administer Add On Benefits and Riders
  We designed an approach of adding additional coverages to a contract in the form riders, along with the full set of features necessary for the administration of these riders from issue through termination, death, or annuitization. For each of these projects, we also created utilities for selectively converting the contract already on file as well as any tables or files that needed conversion.
  

New Rider features that we implemented include the following:

• A new rider which guarantees that the income benefit for annuitization purposes will not drop below an [X] % annual return on money invested in the variable annuity funds. The rider provides a way to benchmark growth in variable sub-account value for annuitization purposes at certain contract anniversary dates.
  
  
• A new rider that applies a credit to the client's account value in specified years if the annual return realized by the account has been less than a specified annual rate.
  
  
• A new rider that provides a benefit to to a contract's beneficiaries that will help defray expenses after the death of the owner or annuitant.
  
  
• A new rider that provides a guaranteed withdrawal benefit that gives the contract owner the right to make periodic withdrawals that total an amount equal to the premium payments made on the contract.
  
  
• An enhancement to an existing rider which is intended to provide the owner with a guaranteed minimum income regardless of the volatility inherent in the investments in the sub-accounts. Rider benchmarks contract growth ay each anniversary against several comparison values and sets the income base equal to the largest value.
  



• New Death Benefit Options
  A number of enhancement projects to administer new death Benefit Options were added to variable annuity products in order to provide a variety of options for the client to choose the basis on which to calculate their death benefits or enhance their investment experience. For each of these projects, we also created utilities for selectively converting the contract already on file as well as any tables or files that needed conversion.
  
  New Death Benefit Option features which were implemented:
  
  
  • Implemented a new DB option which guarantees the death benefit will not fall below an estimated return of a given percent on the variable portion of the contract
    
    
  • Transfer of ownership enhancements
    
    
  • Spousal continuation enhancements
    
    
  • Enhancements to allow multiple beneficiaries to be receiving lump sum settlements using different settlement dates
    
    
• Streamlining of Redundant Data and Process for Adding Products
  We designed an approach for reducing the amount of data necessary for life cycle administration of the full portfolio of both variable and fixed annuities as well as improving the amount of data entry required for entering the details of a product offering and the creation of contracts. We also created a set of utilities for selectively converting the contract already on file as well as any tables that needed conversion.
  
  The changes we provided to the client have given them the tools necessary for the timely creation of a variety of new product and compensation offerings along with the ability to administer additional features.

• Automated Data Input
  created a new process to serve as another method for entering policies into the LANmark financial system. It is meant to augment the manual entry of policies. It is designed to be used as a means to enter large numbers of policies into the system to facilitate regression testing of the platform as well as assist in normal systems test.

• Fixed Interest Sweep
  Created a new automated process option that allows the variable annuity client to automatically transfer the interest earned in the fixed account to the variable accounts offered within the plan, on a periodic basis.
  
  
• Real Rate of Return
  Enhancements were made to calculate and display online and via client communications both the real rate of return and daily earned rate on a contract.
  
  
• Support for Off-shore Programming Resources
  We have provided support for the analysis, design, coding, and quality assurance testing for a number of projects that have been coded by off-shore resources. This has helped to ensure timely deliveries of large projects along with a reduction in defects, leading to a reduction in the effort required of in-house resources to support these projects.
  
  
• Production Support
  We have provided support for solving production problems with quick responsiveness resulting in a decrease in downtime and improved customer service.
  
  

From 1997 through the fall of 2000, Ashton Consulting Group was the sole provider of Magic programming services and support for John Hancock Financial Service’s mission critical TriMark LANmark System. Under this arrangement, our ongoing responsibilities included the following:

• Work with John Hancock’s network support personnel to maintain all hardware used for running the TriMark LANmark application and ensure that it is performing optimally
• Consult with John Hancock’s data architecture and network support personnel to make recommendations regarding hardware and environment upgrades related to the TriMark LANmark application
• Resolve problems encountered by the business partners who use the system
• Analyze requests for new functionality to be added to the system and design, program, test, document, and implement those changes
• Analyze requests for new insurance products to be added to the system and design, program, test, document, and implement those changes

Our resources worked on a number of major projects for John Hancock involving extensive base level changes to both MAGIC 3.5 and MAGIC 8.3 versions. These projects included the following:

The addition of several new functions which were seamlessly integrated into the existing LANmark architecture, including:

- Group payment processing

- On-line DOLI and MEC testing

- Group transfers

- Group Census Import processing

- Mass transaction reversals

- Group allocation changes

- Streamlined application submission processing

- Streamlined agent setup processing

- Creation of a variety of interfaces to other systems

Successful and timely conversion of Variable Universal Life products from LANmark to another in-house application

The addition of six new universal life and variable universal life insurance products, including two new products for the Corporate Owned Life Insurance market

Creation of a new process for producing documents out of the TriMark LANmark System using Microsoft Word, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Seagate Crystal Reports

Trimark LANmark Upgrade Project
One of our most significant achievements in support of John Hancock was the successful upgrading of the TriMark LANmark System from Magic 3.5, Btrieve 5.1, and DOS 5.0 to Magic 8.3, Pervasive SQL 7.1, and Windows NT. This was done with a minimum of cost using a small number of resources over a 6-month period in 1999. Benefits of this upgrade included achieving Y2K compliance and a dramatic improvement in the overall processing speed, efficiency, and stability of the LANmark application. In addition, users of the system were now able to take advantage of the GUI interface and use the mouse to navigate the system, greatly improving the ease of use.