A NEWLY-FORMED East Lancashire firm is at the heart of a training revolution in the financial centres of the world.

The Future Content Company, based at Daisyfield Business Centre, Blackburn, specialises in the development of electronic and online training programmes, which can be used alongside or as replacements to traditional training methods.

And their first major contract has just come to fruition with one of the biggest names in global finance - Lloyd's of London.

Jonathan Britten, managing director, said: "We have been working with Lloyd's of London to design and deliver an innovative web-based training programme for franchise participants who are new to Lloyd's and its global insurance market operations.

"Our design brief incorporated a specific requirement from Lloyd's that the online material could be updated by themselves in real time so as to reflect any changes in their dynamic and unique insurance market immediately.

"We have surpassed our brief and created a flexible solution that is truly innovative."

Lloyd's of London is the world's leading insurance market with a capacity to accept insurance premiums of £14.4 billion this year. It is the world's second largest commercial insurer and sixth largest re-insurance group.

Jonathan and his team are particularly excited because their work is already attracting international attention.

"Even before the launch, Lloyd's was getting queries from across the Atlantic, from the Far East and from the other financial centres of the world about how our training programme could benefit their operations, " he added.

Terry Webb, training, education and development manager at Lloyd's said: "This learning programme helps us achieve our strategic objective of improved transparency of the Lloyd's franchise.

"It is web-based so we can be more visible and transparent to the world at large, it's highly interactive and it delivers a consistent level of training and rigour in addressing training and competence requirements for new market entrants.

"It is also very flexible, meaning we can update the content ourselves which is essential in today's fast-changing regulated financial environment and the learning is paced to suit the individual."