INSE-COM

CGI's Breadth of Expertise Assists Ireland's Insurers with ProductWriter

In this dynamic initiative, CGI-Europe's reputation for expertise in the insurance industry opened the door to a new opportunity in Ireland, as the country's retail insurance sector converts to the electronic marketplace…

The Challenge
CGI's latest venture in the Irish insurance market can be traced to a fruitful association it had developed with Polaris UK Limited. Owned by the UK insurance industry to assist in developing and adopting business and technology standards to improve customer service, Polaris aims to facilitate the introduction of an electronic marketplace in retail insurance products by, among other things, providing software for both product definition by insurers (ProductWriter) and rate provision for intermediaries at point of sale (Run Time Environment or RTE). The company also works to adopt existing EDI standards for transmission to data between intermediaries and insurers.

Early in 1999, Polaris approached CGI to provide consultancy services to insurers on the ProductWriter toolset, which allows insurers to publish new underwriting to brokers via their brokers software houses. CGI's established consultancy team offered the breadth of insurance expertise and insurance architecture that Polaris was seeking.

The relationship established with Polaris led to another challenge later that year in Ireland spearheaded by Inse-Com (Insurer Standards in E-Commerce), founded in 1999 as Ireland's Insurer Standards Body, representing 98 percent of the market. Inse-Com has adopted Polaris as the standard technical platform to deliver full cycle EDI in the Irish market, ultimately involving some eleven insurers. The challenge for the CGI team would be to assist Irish insurers (auto) to develop and distribute their products using ProductWriter.

The Strategy
After several meetings with insurers and INSE-COM, CGI became the recommended supplier of ProductWriter consultancy. CGI would also provide assistance to Maven Systems, a South African software supplier, charged with developing a broker system and integrating the Run Time Environment (RTE).

In leveraging its consultancy expertise, CGI provided project management and quality control for four insurers initially. In May 1999, CGI began work to implement quotation and new business processes in ProductWriter and at the height of this phase, five CGI consultants were working on 13 products for four insurers. Said Michael O'Donnell, Project Manager of INSE-COM, "CGI was accessible at all times which insurers appreciated." This phase wound up in November 1999 for CGI, while insurers tested the product builds and development of the broker system and RTE integration continued.

The Technology

ProductWriter Workstation running on OS2 with DB2, later migrated to Windows NT

RTE—program utilizing binary files to contain insurers' products

Maven System – VISUAL BASIC running on an NT platform

The Results
By early 2001, ten of the eleven insurers had joined Inse-Com and are now in a position to deliver their product changes electronically using ProductWriter. According to O'Donnell, insurers are extremely pleased with the results of the project, "Feedback on CGI's performance from insurers was very positive and very beneficial. Based on our experience, we are very comfortable working with them in the future."