AMP to close Liquid

Wednesday 16th April 2003

General manager Mark Ennis said the decision had been made reluctantly, but parent company AMP had re-evaluated the investment it had in Liquid.

"Liquid requires continual investment to retain its position as an innovative market leader of on-line financial services. Our analysis indicates we can get a better return for this investment from other projects," Ennis says.

"Our experience with Liquid has shown that, while some people are comfortable making financial decisions independently, most people still like to have personal contact with a financial adviser. That has made Liquid a difficult business to make work as a stand-alone provider. There is no doubt that the current financial markets are a contributing factor in this respect and in a different trading environment we may have been able to keep Liquid going.

"That said, AMP considers Liquid has been a success in terms of our objective of providing financial services on-line. There have been around 350,000 visitors to the Liquid site since its inception, with a peak of 33,000 visits in one month.

"We have also learnt a lot from the experience of getting an on-line business up and running. New Zealand has proved to be a good place to test an idea like Liquid, because our cost structures are low here and we have good technology-savvy staff available."

Ennis said Liquid was grateful for the support and commitment of customers, business partners and staff, all of whom helped Liquid achieve what it did. All current staff would be redeployed within AMP so no redundancies were planned.

The site will close on 30 April. From today there will be information on the site telling visitors what's happening. After 30 April there will be a cover page only giving visitors direct links to business partners. That cover page will continue until the end of October.

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