Vendors See Sweet
Spot in Life Market
LIFE INSURERS ARE BEGINNING TO RAMP
up efforts to replace legacy systems—policy administration
in particular. These deals are notoriously time- and labor-
intensive, and extremely costly, yet as carriers acknowledge
the need for organic growth and flexibility, they are actively
participating in policy admin modernization projects.
Policy admin systems are often considered one of the
most interconnected of core systems, so making the deci-
sion to modernize or rip and replace is not an easy one.
According to a report authored by Matthew Josefowicz,
partner at New York-based Novarica, core systems replace-
ment represents a huge undertaking that requires significant
commitments from the entire insurance organization.
It also requires a commitment from policy admin solu-
tion providers, notably, those that provide outsourcing
services, who have made themselves heard lately in their
efforts to help insurers reach those goals.
DST Systems Inc. is one vendor expanding its footprint in
the insurance marketplace. DST claims to provide business
solutions to 21 of the 25 largest U.S. life insurance carriers,
and reports plans to expand its insurance solution portfolio
through a wholly owned subsidiary, DST Insurance Solu-
tions. DST Insurance Solutions was established to deliver
best-in-class outsourced policy administration and payout
technology and services for annuity and life carriers. DST
will compete with existing players CSC, Oracle and Accen-
ture, among others, for these types of services.
—Pat Speer
FCCI InsuranCe
Chooses sword
InsuranCe Portal
FCCI Insurance Group,
Sarasota, Fla., has selected
AgencyPortal, enhanced
with Toolkit and AgencyCon-
nect products, to launch a
transactional Web system for
agents.
The portal is a product of
Boston-based Sword Insur-
ance, a provider of Web-
based product distribution
solutions to the P&C insur-
ance industry. Sword says
FCCI determined the need
to extend its Web offering
beyond its current scope,
conducting an extensive
search for the right approach
and partner.
AgencyPortal is designed
to enable P&C carriers to
quickly and easily execute
key business transactions
with their agents, brokers,
MGAs and consumers,
minimizing the cost of
distributing new and exist-
ing products, and letting
companies intelligently and
cost effectively grow direct
written premium. With the
addition of a Toolkit, Sword
says FCCI’s front-end Web
system will go to market fast-
er, while allowing business
analysts to intuitively create,
update and manage prod-
ucts within AgencyPortal.
AgencyConnect will provide
agents with an easy-to-use,
streamlined workflow solu-
tion for uploading data from
vendor systems to the FCCI
web portal, Sword adds.
“This is a strategic shift in
the way FCCI does business,”
Sword says FCCI will go
live in phases, with internal
testing of the new portal
beginning in spring 2011.
symetra lIFe
seleCts wynsure
system
Symetra Life Insurance Co.,
Bellevue, Wash., has select-
ed Wyde Corp.’s Wynsure
system as the end-to-end
administration solution for
its expanding group life and
disability income insurance
business.
Eagan, Minn.-based
Wyde says that, when fully
implemented, Wynsure will
support policy quoting,
underwriting, policy admin-
istration and claims, with
the first phase, scheduled to
be implemented this year,
covering new business and
policy administration.
“With our plans to ex-
pand Symetra’s group life
and disability income insur-
ance operation, we need an
integrated systems solution
to support us as we grow,”
says Michael Fry, EVP of
Symetra’s Group Division.
“Wynsure will be a key
component of this impor-
tant growth initiative.”
unIted eduCators
seleCts CGI edGe
Chevy Chase, Md.-based
United Educators Insurance,
a Reciprocal Risk Reten-
tion Group, has selected
CGI Edge, a policy, billing
and claims administration
system, in a competitive
procurement to replace its
existing legacy systems.
The Edge solution is a
product of CGI Group Inc., a
Montreal provider of infor-
mation technology and busi-
ness process services, and
includes software, services,
hosting and maintenance.
Country FInanCIal
utIlIzes eastern
shore ConsultInG
Eastern Shore Consulting, a
Halifax, Nova Scotia-based
consulting firm specializing
in insurance software selec-
tion services, has com-
pleted the management and
oversight of an extensive
project with Bloomington,
Ill.-based COUNTRY Finan-
cial focused on the evalua-
tion, selection and pro-
curement of multiple, new
core processing systems.
According to Eastern Shore,
it helped COUNTRY Finan-
cial establish a formal and
disciplined methodology to
be used for future software
evaluation and selection
efforts.
Eastern Shore says the
core processing systems that
were the focus of the project
included P&C policy admin-
istration, rating and billing;
life/health policy administra-
tion; a human resources sys-
tem for leadership resource;
and a finance system for
account reconciliation.
In addition to address-
ing COUNTRY Financial’s
current new system require-
ments, Eastern Shore says
the engagement has provid-
ed the insurer with a reus-
able and proven methodol-
ogy for future efforts.
nodak mutual
uses Cosentry’s
Cloud network
Fargo, N.D.-based Nodak Mu-
tual Insurance has selected
Omaha, Neb.-based CoSen-
try’s secure cloud network to
build a new high availability
platform to protect advanced
imaging and replication
systems. The platform will
enable Nodak to continue
to quickly grow in response
to market demand for their
new products and acquisi-
tions, CoSentry says. The
recently completed build
is expected to improve op-
erations while substantially
reducing incremental costs.
“We were looking for
a smarter, faster way to
accommodate increased
demands in power and
capacity, yet we require
complete control of privacy
and security,” explains
Larry Marxen, director
of information systems
at Nodak Mutual. “The
CoSentry solution made a
lot of sense. It allowed us
to intelligently protect our
iSeries and Intel-based sys-
tems, take advantage of the
financial advantages of virtu-
alization and the important
LAN replication technology
available from the Never Fail
product. More importantly,
using the CoSentry network
of centers allowed us to meet
our critical uptime needs in
a cost-effective manner.”
The contract, an exten-
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