Premium, CSC's business magazine | Winter 2008 | No. 2

The second issue of Premium spotlights the insurance industry. We are witnessing the growth of domestic and cross-border mergers as companies seek to attain critical size and global geographic coverage.

What lessons can be learned from insurance leaders such as Zurich? What is the best way to meet the challenges of the new regulatory and competitive environment? Now, more than ever, the rise of new products and services in both life and non-life insurance requires targeted IT solutions and specially trained staff. Premium analyses the situation.

A summary of the second edition :

Feature

The Insurance Industry keeping pace with change: The European insurance industry is undergoing a radical transformation resulting in a race for competitiveness and a proliferation of products. Against this backdrop of rapid change, insurers are increasingly looking for global services to help them rapidly deploy applications which support their strategy and enhance their performance.

Managing Business Transformation: Interview with Michael Paravicini, Chief Information Technology Officer of Zurich Financial Services Group

Insurers in search of global solutions: Given the many challenges facing the big insurance groups, they are seeking partners that can propose end-to-end solutions tailored to their specific needs.

Experiences

Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries launches e-Depot. Previously the process for creating a company was entirely paper based and traced its roots back to the Napoleonic era and accompanying legal code. Completing the administrative formalities required by the authorities with the help of a notary used to take as long as 56 days.

Thanks to the e-Depot project and with the help of CSC, the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries has reduced this to three.

BNP Paribas, like all banks operating in Europe, was obliged to ensure compliance with MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) as of November 1, 2007. Ensuring compliance was a mammoth task and BNP Paribas’ Group Compliance Unit asked CSC to support them in providing assistance and coordination for all entities affected by the changes.

SCA Packaging, a European leading packaging provider, asked CSC to design, develop and implement a customised SAP CRM system. Now that the new system is in place, SCA salespeople have rapid access to consolidated customer information, and have succeeded in saving a great deal of time thanks to this streamlining of their business processes.

Trends

Five CIO Thinking Hats: Which CIO Are You?

IT goes green: Not just a passing fad or a communication exercise, green IT is becoming a genuine strategic challenge for all organisations. Today, being ecologically responsible is a competitive strength for companies – and a guarantee of profitability as well.

Face-to-Face

Times: Despite some hard truths, Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell, has high hopes for the future of energy.

Views

Sourcing: creators of value for the organisation

Innovation plays a key role in an organisation’s sourcing function –innovation that is both concrete and tangible, since the most effective sourcing departments generate savings up to 10 times higher than their running costs.

In an environment that is already fiercely competitive and under pressure from the arrival of low-cost players, sourcing divisions will have to review their organisation, end to end, with the aim of enhancing their company’s general performance.