Global Insurer Accelerates Move to New Systems

For one top-10 U.S. life insurance provider, a series of mergers and acquisitions had resulted in an environment complicated by multiple policy administration systems, a variety of distribution channels and a host of product offerings for its 30 million customers throughout the United States.

Launching products in the market, while adhering to regulations and keeping costs low, had become a rigid, time-consuming process. As a subsidiary of an ever-expanding global insurer, the carrier decided to simplify its operating structure by consolidating three of its previously autonomous divisions.

“We needed to modernize our systems to accelerate product introduction and ensure more consistent processing and customer service capabilities across our organization,” said the company’s IT manager. A decision was made to convert more than 900,000 traditional and universal life policies from legacy systems to CSC’s CyberLife® policy administration platform.

Then, as a result of one major acquisition, the company opted to also move that business to CyberLife. This project involved the conversion of approximately 210,000 variable universal life policies with unit and fund values, 7,000 universal life policies, 7,500 traditional policies and the testing of four interfaces. The conversion of policies included 24 months of history, loans and policy changes.

Supporting the Conversion of 1.2 Million Policies

The company used CSC’s ConversionEdge^SM global resources in a variety of ways and locations to complete the conversions quickly and cost-effectively. The company used CSC’s staff augmentation services on the initial 900,000-policy conversion and modification teams. CSC provided business and technical staff with insurance experience who, when assigned to existing company teams, were productive immediately.

CSC’s global project teams performed complete conversions under the oversight of the company. A CSC project team was assigned the conversion of the acquired VUL, UL and term policies. CSC’s team, made up of U.S., South African and Indian employees, used shared practices, proprietary software tools and around-the-clock delivery methodology. By taking advantage of operations in multiple time zones, CSC completed the conversion in only 14 months with no disruption in the carrier’s daily business operations.

Saving Time, Travel and Money

In both instances, by using CSC’s ConversionEdge tools and experienced CSC professionals around the world, the company saved a considerable amount in travel expenses. Most of the conversion work could be done from CSC offices, and travel to the company site was only for agreed-upon conversion events.

“Since 2000, CSC has helped life and annuity companies with more than 150 conversions of both large and small blocks. We work with insurers based on their needs, time frames and priorities,” said Mark Christman, director of Conversions for CSC’s Life and Annuity Division.

“In this case, the carrier needed to get the acquired policies up and running with a significant amount of historical data in a little over a year without impacting the existing conversions. CSC could step in with the tools and experience to make this happen. The benefit of this approach is a faster return on investment with all of the company’s business units reaping the benefits of modernization at the same time,” said Christman.

Achieving Strategic Business Goals

Through these initiatives, the company achieved its goals of getting products to market faster and improving its processing and customer service capabilities. Critical to the success of the project were the insurer’s commitment to simplification and its strong relationship with CSC’s ConversionEdge team, tools and methodology.

“One of the critical factors in any large conversion is the use of solid project management best practices,” Christman said. “We’re able to leverage years of experience with every new implementation, which makes the process smooth and predictable for our clients.”