“We’re trying to strike a balance to customize
what is important to us, while not changing
the core technology.” – Steven Marenakos,
Prudential Annuities
on an Oracle database. “We’re trying to strike a bal-
ance to customize what is important to us, while not
changing the core technology,” Marenakos says. “All
the business logic is custom, but the technology is
not.”
Using a component-based architecture, Pru-
dential Annuities has been able to continue to uti-
lize and adapt its older platform to perform both
efficiently and economically. The company also has
added newer systems for specific capabilities. For
instance, in its call center operations, Prudential
uses the NOW platform from UK-based Thunder-
head, to enable representatives to communicate
with customers across multiple channels.
Prudential Annuities has achieved some impressive results through its modernization efforts, enabling it to operate more nimbly at a lower cost.
“For a call center representative, the speed issue
becomes how quickly the system can perform,
while the representative goes from screen to
screen,” Marenakos says.
form affords the company what Marenakos calls
“leverage on the development side. The next time
we want to do something new or make improvements to the system, it’s going to be cheaper and
simpler,” he says.
On the service side, the company also has achieved
some significant improvements as a result of its mod-
ernization of the core systems. “The response rate on
a service representative’s call center screen has to be
fast,” Marenako says. “We’ve seen a five-fold increas-
es in our response rate, and that helps make the ser-
first products, general liability and commercial
property.
For more about policy admin system updates, search
“System Revamp” at www.insurancenetworking.com.
*NQSPWFE;TQFFE;UP;NBSLFU
By modernizing key parts of its core system, Pruden-
tial Annuities was able to boost its speed to market,
Marenakos says. The company can now have a major
new product ready for market in four months, down
from the six months required in the recent past. “We
are now able to do three major product releases per
year, which is a huge gain in speed to market from
just one major product system per year when I joined
the company in 2005,” Marenakos points out. “We
want to be a leader in new products and innova-
tion.”
On the cost side, Marenakos says, “We’ve evolved
from spending 75% of our IT budget just to keep the
lights on five years ago, with just 25% spending on new
development. Now we are about 50-50. We’ve definite-
ly dropped our operations costs.”
The modernization of its administration plat-
vice call better, which is important because we’re a
service company.”
In the online arena, Prudential Annuities is
working with Atlanta-based eBIX Inc. to develop a
generic Web front end to better to serve the bro-
ker-dealer community. “These broker-dealers usu-
ally do business with multiple carriers,” Marena-
kos says. “We have a whole library of transaction
capabilities than can support a modern industry
initiative like that.”
Accenture’s Vale agrees that this approach makes
sense. “A Web-oriented front end for the agent-bro-
ker channel can allow you to do more things.”
";OP;CSBJOFS
For some insurers, the shift to a modern policy
administration system can be a no-brainer, espe-
cially when starting up a new unit or subsidiary
for which there is no current legacy system. That
was the case at Cincinnati Specialty Underwriters
(CSU), which launched in 2008 as a subsidiary
of Cincinnati Insurance Co. The new unit chose
the Camilion Authority Suite from Markham, On-
tario-based Camilion Solutions Inc., to launch its
which enabled the company to easily configure and
modify new products by accessing a central product
information and rules repository. This tool not only
gives CSU the ability to quickly make changes to
products, but also to develop and launch new ones in
a matter of weeks.
