Newly Merged Fortune 500 Company Consolidates Policy Administration and Workflow Software

A merger of two large insurance carriers resulted in the creation of a consolidated financial services organization focused on improving the quality of life of its members, their families and their communities.

The company then set out to grow its membership significantly by offering innovative products and transforming its business model to stress the service experience. However, on the heels of the merger, the new Fortune 500 company was facing numerous challenges related to maintaining multiple policy administration systems to process both life insurance and annuity products.

“It made for a complex environment, and we were struggling to develop and market innovative products,” according to the organization’s chief information officer. “And with all of the different systems, it was difficult to ensure a consistent experience for our members. It wasn’t feasible to train everyone on all of the systems, so we weren’t able to create true shared services within the new organization — and that was a big limitation.”

Simplifying Through Consolidation

After an extensive study of the core software in place throughout the organization, the company determined that in order to transform the business model, it would need to completely overhaul its technology infrastructure.

After reviewing proposals from several technology providers, the company talked to CSC about introducing a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to the systems environment. The resulting plan included converting the company’s legacy administration systems and document and workflow management technologies into a single flexible, SOA-based platform.

The company chose CSC’s Wealth Management Accelerator^® for both policy and annuity processing and AWD^® to provide a single platform for imaging, assignments, workflow and metrics across the carrier’s consolidated back-office locations.

Wealth Management Accelerator appealed to the company because members can shift freely between accumulation and disbursement at any time — eliminating the need to manage two separate contracts after maturity. The system also simplified back-office processes, reduced IT maintenance and gave producers and customers immediate access to online transactions.

AWD helped the company take control of its processes, providing a central repository for all work in progress and employee skills inventory. Using AWD, work is now defined by type and source — email, fax, phone, paper, computer output, EDI, etc. — and held in electronic folders for the company’s workers. Real-time management information details the exact amount of work outstanding by multiple categories, and work is assigned on a priority basis to the employee best suited to do the work. Built-in quality controls allow the company’s managers to set a variety of monitoring techniques.

Driving Innovation and Better Service

Consolidating onto Wealth Management Accelerator and integrating that system with AWD has generated significant benefits for the company including a streamlined process for introducing new, more-competitive products.

“We've dramatically improved our ability to launch innovative life and annuity products,” the company’s CIO said. "The whole process is much less dependent on the IT organization, which helps our business units to be much more agile. By the same token, our call center and back-office personnel are much more empowered to access customer information and perform once-and-done transactions for our members. That has really reduced our number of callbacks and improved our overall service."

Rapidly Converting 3 Million Contracts

The company used CSC’s ConversionEdgeSM offering to convert 400,000 annuity contracts from a legacy system to Wealth Management Accelerator. ConversionEdge uses automated toolsets, standard templates and proven conversion methodologies to significantly reduce time and costs.

"This conversion was an important milestone as it marked the first rollout of Wealth Management Accelerator to the business and the first of two conversions to have all annuities on one administration system,” noted the CIO. “It is also the first step to achieving our goal of operating on Wealth Management Accelerator as our single contract administration system.” The company is moving a total of 3 million contracts to the new system.

Several factors contributed to this program’s success. The modernization effort took full advantage of the organization’s extensive insurance experience in service, products and IT. “In fact, over 200 people have been involved, and working on this program has been extremely motivating and satisfying for our employees,” the CIO said. “There has been strong participation from all levels, including significant involvement from our board of directors. Plus, we have a very strong and engaged cross-functional leadership team that manages the day-to-day program and has built a very strong working relationship with CSC.”

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