1. Accenture Software for Insurance – Credentials December 2010
Quality & Client Satisfaction
4/15/2017
Accenture Software for Insurance – Credentials December 2010
Copyright © 2009 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

2. Credentials Usage
Each credential includes a client overview, business challenge, Accenture’s approach and benefits
delivered. You can find more details on many of these credentials, including contact information, in
the Knowledge Exchange (
Usage guidelines are noted in the lower-left corner of each slide. Before using any credential, please double check usage permissions with the client director.
If you have new/additional engagement work that we can include, or if you have feedback on any of these credentials, please contact:
Kim Badland, Accenture Software for Insurance Marketing Lead
Mark Klinge, Accenture Software Marketing Director
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

3. Affirmative Insurance Claims Transformation Services Win Card
Client Background Affirmative Insurance Holdings, Inc. is a distributor and producer of personal non-standard automobile insurance policies to individual consumers in highly targeted geographic markets. Affirmative currently offers products and services in 13 states, including Louisiana, Texas, Illinois, California and Florida.
Challenge Accenture has been selected to license and implement its claims solution at Affirmative Insurance Company as part of the insurer’s transformation program aimed at helping centralize and automate its claims-handling operations. Accenture will replace Affirmative’s current claims system with Accenture Claim Components Solution, representing the first application of the technology within the non-standard auto insurance market.
Approach At Affirmative, the solution will support core claims transactions from first notification of loss through final payment. The implementation of Accenture Claim Components Solution at Affirmative represents the first application of the technology within the non-standard auto insurance market, which covers drivers who find it difficult to obtain insurance from standard insurance companies due to their driving record, their lack of prior insurance, or other factors. Currently, Accenture Claim Components Solution is used by five of the top 10 US insurance carriers and helps process approximately one-third of all property and casualty insurance claims in the United States.
In addition to the license of the Accenture Claim Components Solution, which is built with Microsoft .Net 2.0 technology, Accenture is providing outsourced application maintenance and infrastructure services to Affirmative under a broad information technology transformation initiative, which the insurer began last year.
External Use Approved. Visit KX for full posting. Posted March 2008.
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved. 3

4. Chubb Corporation Claims Transformation Services
Client Overview Formed in 1882, the Chubb Corporation is a premier US property and casualty insurance company with a market capitalization of $13 billion. Each year, more than 12,000 Chubb employees process 160,000 claims in 31 countries throughout North America, Europe, South America and the Pacific Rim. The company runs more than 130 international offices, is ranked among the top 15 US insurers, and enjoys a global reputation for superior service. Business Challenge: In 1999 Chubb realized its outdated claims system was beginning to compromise its continued success. Claims service had always been a key differentiator for Chubb and the company believed advanced technology support would enable its staff to continue delivering superior levels of service. Chubb's existing system, a 27-year-old mainframe-based legacy claims application, was hampered by limited capacity and high maintenance costs. While implementing a new system would incur some risk—potentially exposing the organization to delays and costs—Chubb wanted the benefits of a customized solution, along with the convenience and cost attractions an off-the-shelf package could offer.
Accenture's Approach Chubb partnered with Accenture to enhance existing assets and to build new components for claims financial processing. Using a customized claims application, the joint team of 220 professionals developed a new desktop workstation that enabled claims staff to handle all aspects of the claims process. The team followed this with a new financial transaction processing system for the Workers Compensation Line of Business to replace the insurer's core legacy application. Accenture also provided change navigation and program management services to ease the transition to the new claims environment. Work was split between Chubb's head office and the Accenture Claim Delivery Centre, a dedicated facility concentrating on advanced claims research and technical development. This laboratory and testing facility provides ready access to the latest Microsoft tools and to more than 130 highly skilled personnel. Innovation Delivered  With the new, Web-based claims management system, Chubb reduced total cost of ownership by retiring several legacy systems. Claims handlers benefited from increased functionality and easy access to real-time information, which freed them to focus on improving customer service. The initiative was successfully completed in less than 17 months, half the time normally associated with this type of project. The short timescale was a direct result of implementing Claim Components (an Accenture Insurance Asset) and using a customized claims application based on a tried and tested core product."
External Use Approved (contact: Shon Bose, 21/61006)
(see Knowledge Exchange)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

5. Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company Claims Transformation Services
Client Background Fireman’s Fund is a premier property and casualty insurer. It provides personal, commercial and specialty insurance products throughout the United States. As of year-end 2007, the insurer had assets of more than US$10 billion and gross written premiums of more than US$6 billion. Challenge In 2006, Fireman’s Fund was seeking an enterprise-wide claims processing platform to support all their major lines of business: auto, property and general liability in both the personal and commercial business units. In seeking to implement a standardized operational model for claims processing, Fireman’s Fund hoped to improve their performance in two important ways: improving their loss ratio (the percentage of premiums that pay for claims) and improving their expense ratio by increasing the efficiency with which they handled claims.
Approach Accenture research shows that insurers must excel in four key areas to achieve high performance in claims: claims segmentation, information access and management, human performance, and organizational effectiveness. For insurers to excel in these areas, their success is directly linked to technology.
Fireman’s Fund selected Accenture to help with the claims transformation because of its deep experience in the insurance industry and its specialist expertise in claims transformation. Accenture also had extensive knowledge of Fireman’s Fund’s business, having completed a number of enterprise underwriting projects with the firm between 2003 and 2006.
To assist Fireman’s Fund in transforming its claims operation—a function that encompasses people, process and technology—Accenture implemented its Claim Components Solution. The Accenture Claim Components Solution brings a standard, automated, repeatable process to every aspect of claims handling, resulting in better control of the expenses of handling a claim and better customer service.
High Performance Delivered The solution has improved Fireman’s Fund’s loss and expense ratios, minimizing claim expenses by reducing the time required to handle a claim and enabling adjusters to spend more time on value-add and customer-facing activities. This was achieved by:
Getting claims to the right claim adjuster quickly and efficiently. Sixty percent of claims are now automatically assigned to specialized adjusters.
Providing the right data to the claims adjuster in an easy-to-use format.
Claims data analysis for guiding the adjuster through the most efficient adjudication process.
Detailed analysis of all claims, enabling fraud detection, recovery potential and unwanted payout trends.
The initiative has also reduced time spent on data entry by hours—and in some cases, days—through automated feeds of critical claims and policy data that used to be gathered manually. Real-time insights into underwriting processes have made Fireman’s Fund more nimble.
Accenture has met or beaten every delivery date, remaining fully on- or under-budget. The claims transformation initiative is enabling Fireman’s Fund to address the key areas required to achieve high performance in claims.
“The solution delivery success is a direct reflection on the knowledgeable and energetic Accenture team lead by Lars Tandrup. Their ‘can-do’ attitude and willingness to succeed helped us overcome barriers and create innovative and creative solutions to meet Fireman’s Fund’s needs… The partnership is so strong that it became difficult for an outsider to tell who belonged to the Accenture team, the IBM team, FFIC (Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company) IT or FFIC business.” – Sissi Tcherazi, IT Senior Director, Fireman’s Fund.
External Use Approved (contact: John Del Santo)
(see Knowledge Exchange for more information)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

6. OneBeacon Claims Transformation Services
OneBeacon Insurance Group is using the Accenture Claim Components Solution to process insurance claims for its business, personal and specialty line divisions.
“Efficient claims management is critical to meeting our primary responsibility as an insurance company, which is to help our customers recover from insured losses,” said Phil Sibilia, senior vice president of claims at OneBeacon Insurance Group. “Accenture's ongoing investment in the Accenture Claim Components Solution enables us to continuously enhance our operations and thus deliver world-class claims services.”
The Accenture Claim Components Solution is a suite of software components that operates on a robust Web-based platform and is designed to help insurers improve the effectiveness and reduce the costs of their claims-handling operations. It can support more than 300 core claims transactions, and easily integrates with a full range of claims interfaces, including agent portals, damage estimating systems, injury evaluation systems, and self-service online claims systems. The Accenture Claim Components Solution, currently used by five of the top 10 property and casualty insurers in North America, helps process approximately one-third of all property and casualty insurance claims in the United States.
The solution in use at OneBeacon features an enhanced user interface, Web services framework, and Microsoft .NET 2.0 technology. The Accenture Claim Components Solution version 6.0, developed with assistance from Avanade, a joint venture of Accenture and Microsoft, also offers the option of a new dynamic "question and answer" architecture.
“For property and casualty insurers, claims processing is their single largest operating cost, and the most important customer-facing function,” said Michael A. Lucarini, senior executive and global head of Accenture's claims solutions. “Striving for the highest efficiency, excellence and innovation possible within the claims operation is vital to high performance in the insurance industry.”
External Use Approved
Source: Accenture News Release, July 10, 2007
Contact: David Radvany. Visit Knowledge Exchange
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

7. RSA Claims Transformation Services
Client Background
RSA is a leading multinational insurance group. The company has operations in over 30 countries and provides its products and services to more than 20 million customers in over 130 countries. For 2007, the Group reported net written premiums of UK£5.8 billion.
Challenge
In early 2003, a new Group CEO, Andy Haste, was appointed by the Board with one main goal, to make RSA, a stronger, higher performing business, one that delivered to shareholders and one that customers and employees could again be proud. Following a comprehensive strategic review, he and his team drew up a demanding set of objectives aimed at turning the business around. These included strengthening the Group’s capital position, building a new management team, embedding a performance culture, and transforming the operational performance of its ongoing business.
The operational transformation program has had two elements. The first has been to restructure and de-risk the ongoing portfolio by focusing on general insurance and by successfully exiting life and underperforming businesses. The second has been a demanding operational improvement program. Two key targets were publicly announced: to cut the expenses of the Group’s ongoing businesses by UK £270 million and to achieve a combined operating ratio of 100 percent on average across the insurance cycle for the Group’s ongoing business (combined operating ratio is a measure of industry profitability).
Critical to the transformation program was a fundamental restructure of the UK claims business. The objective was to improve claims performance by implementing a new operating model to drive reductions in claims indemnity costs and claims expenses.
Approach
Andy Haste brought in Accenture to team with RSA as the partner to implement this fundamental restructure. This would exploit Accenture’s industry insights, transformation expertise, software assets and outsourcing capabilities. The two companies structured a contract with a risk and reward payment arrangement based on the delivery of the program benefits, within budget and on schedule. Both organizations stand to gain by making progress over the course of a three-year plan to transform the insurer.
The transformation program was comprehensive and included:
- Implementing a new operating model comprised of a Rapid Response Unit for claims notification and settlement of simple claims, and a segmented back-office for handling complex claims
- Establishing an offshore claims processing center for claim notification and recovery processing
- Implementing Accenture Claim Components Solution as the single claims handling system across the operations
- Implementing consistent organization, team and job structures and re-engineered business processes across the operations
Establishing supply chain arrangements with suppliers to optimize UK£500 million in spend across motor, commercial property and indirect spend categories
RSA and Accenture staff have worked side by side in integrated teams to deliver the new Claims operating model. Accenture assembled a strong global team with extensive experience in large-scale program delivery, claims transformation, claims system delivery and outsourcing.
High Performance Delivered
The Claims transformation program began in October Within three years, the target operating model and supporting system were fully implemented.
The Claims program is a significant contributor to RSA’s transformation program and strategic plans. At the end of 2005, the Claims indemnity costs were reduced by more than UK£130 million per annum, and Claims expenses were reduced by more than UK£5 million per annum. (Read complete story in knowledge exchange)
Verbatim use only. Contact: Suzanne Cull
(Please use the version given on KX)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

8. Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company Underwriting Transformation Services
Client Background Fireman’s Fund is a premier property and casualty insurer. It provides personal, commercial and specialty insurance products throughout the United States. As of year-end 2007, the insurer had assets of more than US$10 billion and gross written premiums of more than US$6 billion.
Challenge As part of its efforts to become a high-performance business and reduce the risk associated with underwriting decisions, Fireman’s Fund wanted to transform its underwriting operations across all lines of business. This would give its underwriters tools that would enable them to quickly adapt to market changes, helping to improve risk decisions and sustain profitable growth. Approach To transform its underwriting operations, Fireman’s Fund leveraged the full suite of the Accenture Underwriting Components Solution, a Web-based software platform designed to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of insurers’ underwriting processes through rules-based technology. The Accenture underwriting solution, built on Microsoft .NET technology and running on a Microsoft Windows Server, enables insurers to conduct underwriting transactions through the use of Web services.
The Accenture Underwriting Components Solution provides underwriters with industry-leading capabilities, such as:
Dynamic risk assessment based on question-and-answer dialogues designed to help institutionalize Fireman Fund’s underwriting expertise.
Business user tools that allow fast and easy underwriting, pricing, workflow and assessment questions to support new market opportunities, product innovations and changes in risk exposure.
Automation of the data collection and cleansing process while providing authoritative location data for use across all underwriting, policy and claims processes.
By automating routine tasks and enhancing its account management capabilities, Fireman’s Fund can build upon its disciplined underwriting process while helping underwriters focus on intelligent market growth and account servicing through fluctuating market cycles.
High Performance Delivered More than 500 commercial underwriters and their teams now use the new underwriting platform and are achieving several points of combined loss and expense improvement as well as increased target account growth.
The claim solution has lowered Fireman’s Fund’s claim expenses by reducing the time required to handle a claim and enabling adjusters to spend more time on value-add and customer-facing activities.
Overall, Fireman’s Fund has lowered its expenses by several basis points and is positioned to write new business more consistently, leveraging best practices from across the company in an automated manner.
Accenture has met or beaten every deadline date and remained on or under budget on all projects delivered at Fireman’s Fund.
External Use Approved (contact: John Del Santo)
(see Knowledge Exchange for more information)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

9. Generali Outsourcing; Insurance BPO Services
Client Background Generali is an international life insurance and employee benefits group that offers the full spectrum of insurance and investment products to individuals and corporations. Represented by more than 331 companies in some 40 geographical markets, it has approximately 46 million customers and assets under management worth more than €398 billion (2007). It was ranked the number-four insurer by Fortune Global 500 (©) in In line with its commitment to provide shareholders with sustained high growth (revenue has grown at more than the average market rate since 2004), Generali purchased two life insurance companies: Le Continent and Zurich France.
Challenge While acquisition is a favored means of achieving rapid growth, it is not without its challenges. Generali recognized it needed to integrate the two new closed blocks of business as quickly and smoothly as possible. More than that, it had to do it without undertaking complex system or process re-engineering, or investing heavily in new technology. All the while, it had to maintain a consistent level of customer service, to allay concerns about the impact of the acquisitions. And because Generali pursues growth through organic expansion as well as acquisition, the integration had to be achieved without distracting key personnel from their first priority: new product development to exceed market growth.
Approach Accenture has an impressive track record of providing insurance BPO services to French, European and global carriers—it manages more than 2 million life policies alone. Its Insurance Data Migration Factory is a tried and tested tool for migrating large databases from clients’ legacy systems to Accenture Insurance BPO Services’ one-to-many systems. And its life insurance processing platform, which is relied on by a number of leading carriers, has proved its ability to deliver high quality back office administration at a significantly lower cost than clients can achieve on their own.
The integration of Generali’s two new blocks of business entailed the transfer to Accenture of some 150,000 policies. The Insurance Data Migration Factory was used to ensure that all records were rapidly and accurately converted and moved onto a shared processing platform. Policy administration for closed books was transferred to Accenture Insurance BPO Services, which involved the standardization and automation of processes. The responsibility for customer care was taken over by Accenture Insurance BPO Services’ call center.
High Performance Delivered The project has been a notable success. Data migration was achieved at speed, and Generali's policy processing smoothly transferred to Accenture. The industrialized processing model, with its economies of scale and
best-practice components, generated immediate cost savings and quality gains. Administration costs were reduced by more than 50 percent at the same time as customer satisfaction was improved and processing back-logs reduced: within three months, the stock of requests and complaints was reduced by two thirds. All of this was achieved without major capital expenditure, and without Generali having to divert resources and energy from new product development to overseeing the integration project.
By helping Generali successfully industrialize its processes, Accenture has added impetus to its journey to high performance.
External Use Approved (contact: Louise Butler-Green, )
(see Knowledge Exchange, Dated: May 14th, 2009)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

10. Large Insurance Holding Company Underwriting Transformation Services
Client Background This Large Insurance Holding Company is a U.S.-based insurance and financial services holding company and offers a wide range of insurance products to individuals, small businesses and middle market institutions. Specifically, it provides personal automobile, homeowners, workers' compensation, commercial automobile and commercial multiple-peril insurance coverage through two of its Insurance subsidiaries. In 2003, the company reported sales of $3.2 billion and net income of nearly $87 million.
Challenge Like many US carriers, the company's commercial lines were showing signs of poor profitability from years of underwriting discipline and price erosion. To rapidly return to profitability, it knew it needed to identify the root cause of its poor UW behaviors and institute a rigorous improvement program. For help, the company turned to Accenture who brought deep underwriting expertise. Accenture helped the company conduct a thorough analysis of its existing underwriting capabilities. Results of the audit revealed that the company needed to:
Clarify and consistently act within its underwriting risk appetite
Institutionalize best practice underwriting processes
Train underwriting staff on fundamentals through repeatable frameworks
Improve its customer data integrity and account management capabilities
Improve the underwriting environment to support continual learning, rapidly introduce strategic changes and liberate the underwriter to focus on the market.
Approach Accenture quickly partnered with the company to build an Underwriting Workstation solution that would improve underwriting processes within the company's commercial lines.
The Accenture/Large Insurance Holding Company team relied on resources from Accenture's insurance solution group, Accenture's Delivery Center in Mumbai, and Accenture's Avanade partners to help design and implement the new system in just 10 months.
In designing an application that would replace the company's legacy registration, clearance and WIP systems, and establish an "umbrella" workstation environment over its legacy system, the team leveraged the Accenture Underwriting Components Solution.
This solution is a software platform and business process vision focused on improving underwriting efficiency, effectiveness and overall profitability. It helps inject greater discipline and more consistent behaviors to an organization's underwriting decisions. It also enhances information management and collaboration across the entire underwriting process. Among the Accenture Underwriting Solution components applied to this project were: Underwriting Task Assistant; Account Folder; Name & Address; and Underwriting Utilities. The new solution provides underwriters with an integrated, Web-based desktop that interfaces with their policy and point-of-sale applications.
High Performance Delivered With Accenture's help, the company is saving time, increasing revenues and improving loss ratios. According to the company's chief information officer, "The Accenture Underwriting Components Solution provides a unique data model and modular software components to help enhance our account and activity management." The business value of this innovative solution translates into more than $3 million in annual benefits. In short, the Accenture Underwriting Components Solution is helping the company gain a competitive advantage by providing a more disciplined underwriting process, automating routine tasks and facilitating timely and accurate account management. In these ways, the new underwriting system marks a significant milestone in the company's journey to becoming a high-performance business.
Contact approval required. (contact: Gail E. McGiffin, 30/13880)(see Knowledge Exchange)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

11. RSA Accenture Insurance Solution
Approach
Accenture was appointed to work with RSA as the strategic partner to implement the transformation. This would exploit Accenture’s industry insights, transformation expertise, software assets and outsourcing capabilities. The two companies structured a contract with a risk and reward payment arrangement based on the delivery of the programme benefits, within budget and on schedule. Both organizations were aligned to gain by delivering against the five year plan to transform the insurer.
The comprehensive programme included:
Implementing Accenture Insurance Solution (AIS) across the majority of RSA’s Corporate and Small Business segments as well as its Broker & Affinity Personal Motor books. AIS supports the full lifecycle from Quote & Buy, to Servicing, Single View of Customer, Billing, Agency and Agent Accounts, Risk Aggregation. It is integrated with Accenture’s Claim Components to give full cycle claims support
22 strategic products have been developed to take forward new business for the equivalent of more than 80 legacy products. The legacy book of over 500,000 policies is being migrated onto the new systems
New risk appetite,supported by the automated underwriting facility within AIS, to select the best risks and to price them appropriately
Commonality of operational processes that are consistent across products enabling cross-skilling retrained underwriters and clerical staff. Operational efficiency driven by automated processes such as scanning, indexing, workflow, centralised print
Automated controls and automated underwriting licences
Call centre capability for broker and direct to affinity customer channels and EDI capability for Broker
A new data warehouse to support MI for operations, and as a granular source of data for pricing decisions and portfolio analysis
An integrated Product factory to give the business greater control over their products and their rating flows.
High Performance Delivered
AIS implementation has supported RSA in driving forward product and process rationalisation. Many manual processes have been eliminated staff are using the AIS system to support their work. It gives RSA the system support to reduce underwriting leakage through optimised risk appetite, underwriting excellence and controls. Migration of the legacy book is underway. (Full story in Knowledge Exchange)
Client Background
RSA is a leading multinational general insurance group. The company has operations in 28 countries and provides its products and services to more than 20 million customers in over 130 countries. For 2007, the Group reported net written premiums of UK £5.8 billion.
Challenge
In early 2003, a new Group CEO, was appointed by the Board with a goal, to make RSA, a stronger, higher performing business, one that delivered to shareholders and one that customers and employees could again be proud. Following a comprehensive strategic review, a demanding set of objectives was drawn up aimed at turning the business around. These included strengthening the Group’s capital position, building a new management team, embedding a performance culture, and transforming the operational performance of its ongoing business.
The operational transformation had two elements. The first was to restructure and de-risk the ongoing portfolio by focusing on general insurance and by successfully exiting life and underperforming businesses. The second was a demanding operational improvement programme. Two key targets were publicly announced: to cut the expenses of the Group’s ongoing businesses by UK £270 million and to achieve a combined operating ratio of better than 100 percent on average across the insurance cycle for the Group’s ongoing business (combined operating ratio is a measure of industry profitability).
A key component of the operational improvement programme was a significant investment in the key segments in which RSA operate as well as enhancing the Underwriting that underpinned pricing. Through multiple mergers and acquisitions the business had acquired several systems and a variety of manual processes. Many of the policies details were stored on paper files and underwriting was often performed manually.
Verbatim use only. (contact: Suzanne Cull ) Visit KX for more.
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

12. Safeco Product Transformation Services Win Card
Safeco Selects Accenture to Implement New Insurance Product Configuration System
NEW YORK and SEATTLE; May 15, 2008 – Safeco (NYSE: SAF) has selected Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to help implement a new product development system for its commercial and personal insurance businesses. The purpose of the new system, which will be based on the newly unveiled Accenture Insurance Configuration Components Solution, is to help centralize and enhance Safeco’s product development capabilities across all geographies.
“Customer satisfaction, growth and efficiency are Safeco’s highest priorities,” said Tom Troy, Senior Vice President, Safeco Business Insurance. “Based upon Accenture technology, our enhanced product development suite is designed to satisfy the needs of our growing customer base and support product innovation well into the future. We are pleased to make Accenture our technology and consulting provider for this important initiative.”
Safeco is the charter client of the new Accenture Insurance Configuration Components Solution, an advanced modular software application offering a full range of product configuration capabilities for medium and large property and casualty (P&C) insurers. The solution is the newest addition to Accenture’s broad and evolving suite of P&C technology solutions, which also includes market-leading claims, underwriting and policy administration software. Accenture is expected to help Safeco adapt and implement the solution by the end of 2008.
The Accenture Insurance Configuration Component Solution was originally developed by Accenture in close collaboration with Microsoft and Avanade, a company created by Accenture and Microsoft. Its key features include: Support for centralized product definitions that can be configured and maintained by business users; interoperability with leading external engines for insurance underwriting, rating and forms; a product developer’s workbench that allows product changes to be pre-modeled for their impact on premiums; and Microsoft .NET 3.0 for support of Web services and full services-oriented architecture.
“The Product Development Suite is a key component in Safeco’s strategy to modernize its product and policy systems and allow for greater innovation in the product development process,” said Kurt Schulenburg, Director, Product & Policy Information Technology, Safeco. “The ability to quickly configure and analyze new product logic will improve speed to market and reduce implementation costs associated with introducing new products to the marketplace.”
“Efficient product configuration is one of the most challenging operational objectives for P&C carriers today,” said Gail McGiffin, senior executive in Accenture’s insurance practice. “Our new component-based solution frees leading insurers like Safeco of the traditional limits of legacy policy systems, enabling them to rapidly develop and deploy their product offerings, efficiently centralize their product management operations across product and regulatory lines, and integrate their product systems with other best-of-breed technology and information tools.”
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. Its home page is
About Safeco
Safeco, in business since 1923, is a Fortune 500 property and casualty insurance company based in Seattle, WA. Safeco is also one of the nation’s leaders in the sale and service of surety bonds.
Source: Accenture News Release, May 15, 2008 (contact: Sean Conway, +1 (917) ) Visit Knowledge Exchange.
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

13. Zurich España Product/Policy/Billing Trans Services
Client Background Founded in 1872, Zurich Financial Services Group is an insurance corporation, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, employing 70,000 people in 60 countries. Zurich España, a division of Zurich Financial Services Group, has 130 branches serving more than 1.8 million customers. It offers a comprehensive range of products for individuals covering non-life and life insurance. The non-life products include property, accident, health, auto, liability, specialty lines and financial risk coverage.
Challenge As a result of a series of mergers and acquisitions, Zurich España inherited many different information systems, products and claims processing methods. As Zurich España consolidated, it recognized the need to rationalize its information systems and adapt the technology to handle the new Euro currency. Additionally, fragmented information about customers and policies limited Zurich España’s ability to effectively plan and adapt its business strategies that were heavily focused on its customers.
Approach During a competitive bid in 1997, Zurich España selected Accenture because of its proven implementation capabilities and global business approach. Over the next three years, Accenture and Zurich España designed and built an innovative application, Accenture's Insurance Solution, to centralize and manage all information and operations. Previously, each business unit used different software for various life and non-life products, and customers often had to contact distinct business units for separate types of insurance. Accenture built a set of standard applications to centralize the common need of all products. These applications, including Product Development, Policy Administration, and Claims Administration software, support and process product and policy types using a single method and incorporate built-in technical components, like print facilities, security and documentation management. By storing all operations and data on the central network, this environment interfaces easily with multiple client platforms and facilitates common procedures for Zurich España’s branches, agents, brokers and call-centers.
"Accenture’s Insurance Solution was a key component in the implementation of our new customer service focused strategic initiatives. It allowed us to build our new operational and business models as well as reduce our expense ratio by several percentage points over a two year period.”
– Mr. Juan de Blas – COO Operations, Support and Claims Director
Each distribution channel can access policy information about customers, create and manage policies and process claims, making the Insurance Solution a real multi-channel application. Additionally, because it accommodates all of Zurich España’s product lines, any distribution channel can handle all of a customer's needs, increasing the quality of Zurich España’s customer service, client satisfaction and retention rate. Product Development is the most innovative component of Accenture’s Insurance Solution. Formerly, it took up to six months to create a new product or to modify an existing
product. Product Development, built using Accenture’s technical expertise and Zurich España’s industry knowledge, reduced Zurich España’s time to market from six months to two weeks! Business users define and update products in Product Development, with minimal IT support, reducing reliance on the IT department and increasing Zurich España’s responsiveness to market changes.
Zurich España wanted the flexibility to adjust its business strategy to match shifting industry and customer demands. So Accenture designed the new system to be modular, scalable and able to adapt to future anticipated changes in technology, strategy and products. Insurance Solution technology allows new distribution channels to be configured, which simplifies mergers and acquisitions by integrating additional companies. The technology is configured to handle multiple currencies and
can be translated into multiple languages.
High Performance Delivered
Together, Zurich España and Accenture have designed and built a solution to standardize insurance processes. Accenture’s Insurance Solution facilitates Zurich España’s ability to quickly adjust to changes in the market and reduces costs, specifically:
• Decreasing Zurich España’s costs by unifying common operations to efficiently manage accounting, send policy notifications and process claims
• Centralizing customer information to improve underwriting. Distribution channels now access complete customer profiles and ratings, thereby lowering expense and loss ratios
• Improving quality of service, customer satisfaction and retention rates by integrating distribution channels. Reducing the costs and easing integration of acquired businesses through the multi-company capabilities of this solution
• Increasing Zurich España’s cross-selling opportunities across business lines with a common, customer-centric platform
• Giving Zurich España the flexibility to change business strategies and facilitate global international business and IT strategies by providing a functional architecture that supports multinational activities
External Use Approved (see Knowledge Exchange)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

14. North American Life Insurance Company Life Insurance Consolidation Services
Client Background Founded in 1860, North American Life Insurance Company is the fourth largest mutual life insurance company in the United States. As of December 31, 2005, the insurer had US$24.8 billion in assets. With more than 5,000 employees, 2,900 financial representatives and over 80 agencies nationwide, the company and its subsidiaries protect individuals, businesses and their employees with life, disability, health and dental insurance products, and offer 401(k), financial products and trust services.
Challenge North American Life Insurance Company was facing a challenging competitive environment and wanted to increase market share while lowering operating costs.
North American Life Insurance Company’s business process involved many steps ranging from prospect information, to provision of illustrations, and entry of application data from paper applications. The existing data entry application was inefficient, difficult to maintain, inconsistently applied across distributors, and lacked the agility to introduce new products rapidly. The process of underwriting and issuing a policy was largely manual and paper-intensive. None of the processes—from application and underwriting to policy issue—could share information, making it almost impossible to accurately track new business cases and provide quality service to agents. The company needed to reduce cycle times and increase efficiency in the application, underwriting and issue process. Furthermore, multiple legacy administration systems slowed new product introductions and were expensive to operate from the perspective of customer service and IT maintenance.
The situation required, among other things, that North American Life Insurance Company consolidate and simplify its IT infrastructure. The insurer recognized that it needed a next-generation administration system to solve the issues. North American Life Insurance Company turned to Accenture to help develop a business case and bring the benefits of straight-through processing (STP) to policy administration and claims.
Approach Accenture and North American Life Insurance Company partnered to introduce STP using the Accenture Life Insurance Platform for its individual life insurance business. The multi-phase project reengineered and automated the home office process while streamlining the sales process by integrating sales tools in the field. The system automated the movement of a case from inception at the time of sale straight through to the end of the process, facilitating all the steps required to activate the new policy, including automated interfaces with partners and other internal systems.
North American Life Insurance Company’s agents can use laptops to complete a ‘smart’ application, ensuring good-order applications, generating required forms and collecting electronic signatures. Once new applications are uploaded, both agency and North American Life Insurance Company home office staff review the application and begin the underwriting process. Ordering, receipt, and evaluation of medical requirements are automated using a rules engine. A new imaging and workflow system further enhances the process. Once approved, policies can be printed at the agency.
Beyond streamlining processes, North American Life Insurance Company views STP as a way to retain and acquire new agents. Younger, technology-savvy people new to the workforce expect enhanced tools and experienced agents will appreciate the ease of doing business with North American Life Insurance Company.
North American Life Insurance Company is also implementing a policy administration solution for universal life and variable universal life insurance policies. The conversion of the whole life business is in the planning stages.
High Performance Delivered North American Life Insurance Company now has a more streamlined and proactive approach to core business processing – from point of sale through ongoing administration. The Accenture Life Insurance Platform has provided North American Life Insurance Company with a highly efficient distribution and operating model, putting the insurer on the path to be more competitive, increase market share and lower costs. The implementation has resulted in significant improvements both in North American Life Insurance Company’s general agency network and in the home office for both the underwriting and new business organization and policy administration, including: faster policy issue cycles, eliminating the time required to send insurance policies through the postal mail, and offering efficient, personalized customer service.
North American Life Insurance Company is on track to achieve improvements in new business cycle time from quotation to issue, quality levels, and new product introduction cycle times. With benefits for customers, agents and the home office, North American Life Insurance Company has taken a major step toward achieving high performance.
External Use Approved
Contact: John Gorman Visit Knowledge Exchange.
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

15. Security Benefit Life Insurance Consolidation Services
How Accenture Helped
Security Benefit selected Accenture to provide its new policy administration system and in just eight months the Accenture Life Insurance Platform (ALIP) was fully implemented and operational with a new product for Security Benefit. All legacy mainframe systems were decommissioned within two years of going live on the new platform. This included a conversion of more than 250,000 policies from multiple administration platforms. More than fifty other mainframe applications were also replaced, greatly simplifying Security Benefit’s enterprise technology platform.
Together, Accenture and Security Benefit created an integrated and dedicated team, which proved to be the key to its success. Five IT professionals and three business-side staffers were responsible for creating a seamless interaction between IT and business interests and breaking down any barriers to the ALIP System’s implementation. Accenture and Security Benefit worked together to develop an innovative conversion approach, taking the guesswork out of a process that is normally very complex and difficult. Two project managers—one from Accenture and one from Security Benefit—reported together every three weeks to the company’s Program Management Office, which oversees all corporate-wide projects. The integrated team structure optimized the roll-out process and facilitated faster returns on the company’s investment.
High Performance Delivered
Accenture has continued to support the maintenance and enhancement of the platform. The company currently processes over one million customer accounts per year.
Specific benefits delivered include cost savings of approximately $7 million per year, with direct service cost per policy reduced by 45%. Significant gains in customer service capacity and efficiency were also seen, with policies per FTE increasing by 120%; customer service costs lowered by 31%; cost per transaction decreased by 27%; transaction volumes increased by 50%; and overall quality improved (with an average quality level of 99.8%). In turn, IT costs decreased across the board, with IT staff reductions of 35%; infrastructure costs lowered by 23% and PC help desk costs by 25%.
The improved processing times and front- and back-office integration lowered cycle time to less than an hour and reduced the number of applications and systems. This enabled faster cost/benefit analyses to determine feasibility of product changes, facilitated a shorter product development cycle cut new product roll-out time by 65% while tripling new product releases. Finally, system back-up time decreased to two and a half hours with no staff overhead.
Client Background
Security Benefit is based in Kansas and has more than 100 years of experience in the financial services industry, with $19.3 billion in assets under management in It provides retirement plan services and investment products. Security Benefit also provides an array of financial programs to various markets and offers investment options through partnerships with leading money managers.
Business Challenge
The executive team at Security Benefit, a leading North American life insurance firm, determined that the company needed a new administration system as part of an overall IT transformation strategy. This strategy would better align Security Benefit’s technology with their changing business model, taking advantage of innovations to leapfrog the competition by dramatically reducing speed to market for new products.
Aging legacy mainframes, running COBOL and a patchwork of add-on systems, had become too costly and complex to maintain—and bringing new annuity products to market often took more than a year. In turn, the legacy systems contributed to a cumbersome administrative process that impeded customer service.
To move toward high performance, Security Benefit sought to:
Replace its twin mainframe administrative systems with a single “Rules Based” platform. This was part of an overall initiative to eliminate all of its mainframe-based applications
Develop new supporting downstream applications and complete full integration of technology solutions across the enterprise-wide processing platform
Reduce IT and direct service costs while increasing customer service capacity, efficiencies and quality
Enable a shorter product development lifecycle and speed cost/benefit analysis for product changes
Shorten system back-up times and improve front-office technology and service delivery capabilities
External Use Approved.
(Visit KX for more information; Date: 30th April, 09)
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

16. Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company Front Office-Marketing/Sales/Service Transformation Solution
Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company Adopts Accenture’s Front-Office Technology Platform
NEW YORK; May 14, 2008 – Southern Farm Bureau Life has selected Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to implement a technology system that will enable their agents to complete and submit life insurance policy applications to the insurer’s home office electronically.
The new front-office system will be based upon the Accenture Life Insurance Platform, a Web-based technology designed to help insurers enhance the speed and efficiency of policy application processing, underwriting and policy administration through the automation of routine tasks. At Southern Farm Bureau Life, the solution will support the policy application process for permanent life insurance, term life, adjustable premium life and all riders available within these products.
“Providing electronic application entry to all of our 4,200 agents can help improve our overall efficiency by reducing data errors and omissions that tend to occur on our current paper-based system,” said Randy Johns, Senior Vice President, policy administration, Southern Farm Bureau Life. “This is also part of our initiative to help shorten the time to book new business and pay commissions, improve the sale of our life products and ultimately gain new advantages.”
John Gorman, a senior executive in Accenture’s insurance practice, said, “Life insurers continue to seek new and creative ways to improve agent efficiency. At the same time, they are pursuing strategies that will make it easier for customers to do business with them. By extending electronic application capabilities directly to the point of sale with new technologies, Southern Farm Bureau Life has shown a definitive strategy to improve both the producer and customer experiences and achieve high performance in the marketplace.”
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With 178,000 people in 49 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$19.70 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2007.
About Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company
Founded in 1946, Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company has been serving the life insurance needs of its members and customers for over 60 years. Farm Bureau Insurance offices are located in counties and parishes in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia with over 4,200 agents providing competitively priced life insurance products. Its motto is “Helping You Is What We Do Best”. At the end of 2007, the company had over $87 billion of life insurance in-force and $9.9 billion of total assets. The Corporate office of Southern Farm Bureau Life is located in Jackson Mississippi.
External Use Approved (see Knowledge Exchange)
Source: Accenture News Release, May 14, 2008 (contact: John Gorman, )
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.

17. Zurich Financial Services Group Underwriting Transformation Services Win Card
Zurich Financial Services Group Selects Accenture’s Underwriting Solution to Support its P&C Operations
NEW YORK; Oct. 7, 2010 – Accenture’s (NYSE: ACN) underwriting solution has been selected to support Zurich Financial Services Group’s (Zurich) property and casualty (P&C) insurance operations globally.
Zurich intends to leverage the Accenture Underwriting Components to support a wide range of business services, including new business submission, clearance and quoting across all lines of its P&C operations.  Zurich uses the Accenture Underwriting Components’ data model also to further standardize and streamline its data management processes.  Zurich will implement the solution in North America and Europe with the license to later expand into other geographies.
“The Accenture Underwriting Components data model and business services are expected to have a positive impact on our existing programs and enhance our underwriting processes,” said Tom Peach, Chief Information Officer of Zurich in North America. “Accenture’s underwriting software is a valuable addition to our technology portfolio.”
“Leading insurers such as Zurich recognize the importance of underwriting management in maximizing the overall performance of the organization,” said John Vale, a senior executive in Accenture’s Insurance practice. “Leveraging the Accenture Underwriting Components, Zurich is gaining the benefit of a proven industry software solution known for raising the performance of insurers’ underwriting functions through a more disciplined underwriting process, automation of routine tasks and improved decision-making.”
About Zurich Financial Services
Zurich Financial Services Group (Zurich) is an insurance-based financial services provider with a global network of subsidiaries and offices in North America and Europe as well as in Asia-Pacific, Latin America and other markets. Founded in 1872, the Group is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. It employs approximately 60,000 people serving customers in more than 170 countries.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 204,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries.  Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments.  The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010.  Its home page is
About Accenture Software
Accenture Software combines deep technology acumen with industry knowledge to develop differentiated software products, including a broad range of insurance industry solutions that are used by more than 100 insurers in over 25 countries.  As a dedicated global organization, Accenture Software offers innovative software-based solutions and the unmatched skills of experienced professionals to enable organizations to meet their business goals and achieve high performance.
Source: Accenture News Release, October 7, 2010 (contact: Sean Conway, +1 (917) ) Visit Knowledge Exchange.
Copyright © 2010 Accenture All Rights Reserved.