CGI develops a global internal life reinsurance system for SCOR

“The CGI team responded to both our functional and technical requirements. CGI demonstrated great teamwork and displayed the effort and flexibility we needed to ensure the project was achieved within the deadlines set.”

Marc Philippe, Project Director, Scor

With 31 offices worldwide and operations in more than 150 countries, SCOR is the largest reinsurance company in France and one of the largest in the world. The principle of reinsurance does not differ from that of regular insurance, but rather than providing direct coverage for human and material risks, it insures other insurance companies. SCOR might have agreements with one or more reinsurers to transfer all or part of the risk a given contract exposes it to. SCOR’s shares are traded on the Paris, Frankfurt and New York stock exchanges.

The Challenge
The LIRAS project (Life Individual Reinsurance Administration System) was initiated when SCOR set out to improve its life reinsurance processes and, in particular, to meet three crucial needs: 1) the need to centralize information to better monitor its obligations per policy holder for assignment of insurance around the world; the same policy holder may buy insurance contracts with a number of different companies, which themselves may contract reinsurance from SCOR. It is important that SCOR identifies and quantifies its total obligation to this policy holder in the event it seeks reinsurance from other reinsurers; 2) the need to produce quarterly retrocession accounts in the United States; and 3) the need to produce annual retrocession accounts in France and to compile statistics for the monitoring of portfolios.

The new system had to be centralized and a part of the overall infrastructure of SCOR’s information system. It also had to include Powerbuilder development tools used by SCOR. CGI’s main challenges were the extremely tight deadlines, project specfications that yet to be clearly defined and highly complex content, particularly for the establishment of retrocession accounts.

The Strategy
CGI began by focusing on the specification and technical architecture analysis in order to get the project off to a quick start. An initial draft was delivered less than three months after the project launch.

Because the project was initiated by another company, which CGI took over from during the project, CGI first established a matrix to allow the complexity and development time of each segment to be defined according to objective criteria. This permitted the workload to be easily evaluated both by the client and the CGI team, which greatly facilitated the working relationship between the two companies.

Once the first project phase was completed, CGI’s role was expanded as follows: 1) to recover existing data, CGI conducted a strategic evaluation, developed specifications and the components requiring automation, and assisted during the launch; and 2) CGI established the specifications and developed the content of the infocenter (new data center).

“By joining forces with CGI, we now have a global data bank, which allows us to monitor our obligations with regard to life reinsurance contracts in real time all of our subsidiaries around the world,” stated Marc Philippe, Project Director for SCOR.

The Technology

• Sybase
  
• Powerbuilder
  
• C Language

The Results
Throughout the project, CGI demonstrated considerable flexibility and responsiveness and in-depth involvement from its team. This allowed SCOR to obtain - on time and on budget - a system that fully met its needs. The new system developed by CGI allowed SCOR to produce its retrocession accounts much more rapidly. The global database also allows it to more efficiently monitor its obligations and in doing so, reduce its risk.

The LIRAS project is yet another example of the constructive and effective collaboration that exists between SCOR and CGI, which has since been extended to application maintenance.

“The CGI team responded to both our functional and technical requirements,” concluded Marc Philippe. “CGI demonstrated great teamwork and displayed the effort and flexibility we needed to ensure the project was achieved within the deadlines set.”