Using this model Skandia has been able to cut start up time for a new division in a foreign country from an industry average of five years to less than a year and sometimes to five or six weeks. Our prime customers are our alliance partners who are our financial advisers and brokers and other specialists that collaborate with us. Then jointly we service the ultimate customer. We try to develop knowledge for our alliance partners by having a Leader's College which is a kind of training program for them. It is a concept developed by America Skandia.
Training is in economics, finance, as well as management.
Then they take that knowledge to the ultimate customer. It is an American Skandia CD-ROM, which has packaged the knowledge of financial planning. You can see it is a kind of teaching device and knowledge sharing for both the ultimate customer and the intermediary. We are starting to develop competency alliances or, in technological terms, extranets. Knowledge development currently is done in the gray area or the edge between organizations.