NIIT is set to launch its latest offering to the insurance market next week, in the form of an upgraded policy and claims administration system which will join its existing set of insurance tools.

NIIT has delivered IT services to its Lloyds of London clients for some 20-years, using its insurance specific tools:

• Subscribe: NIIT’s existing policy administration platform, a multi-currency insurance and reinsurance policy administration system
• Exact Advantage: a data capture facility for property, terrorism, credit risk, aviation and marine. The tool is used to assess and monitor risk exposure, using a mapping interface and GIS technology
• Ipf3: process automation and workflow tool
• Acumen Advantage: provides management information, encompassing underwriting, claims, reinsurance accounting and actuarial data.

Over the years, NIIT has enhanced these tools and also made acquisitions such as Room Solutions in 2006 (see separate article) in support of its insurance business.

In anticipation of new opportunities in the P&C insurance sector, stemming from a combination of factors (see below), NIIT is now launching a suite of software which combines all these tools, also a new tool.

The new product is intended to help commercial insurers deal with the challenge of operating with multiple systems: NIIT’s insurance clients, for example, typically operate with around a dozen systems, each with different regulatory and LOB capabilities. The new platform enables the effective integration of these systems by operating as an overriding core platform, while allowing clients keep the individual reporting processes of the various PAS, and the specific functionalities for different LOBs (some in the London market being particularly specialist).

The new product allows NIIT to address some of the key issues faced by insurers today, including:

• Increasing regulatory requirements
• Ongoing M&A activity: insurers continue to acquire books of business which operate on different PAS. A system that enables the assimilation of additional systems gained through acquisition is likely to be attractive; it also removes the need for training on different PAS and requires knowledge of just one system.

NIIT has between 15 and 20 clients operating on its existing Subscribe system currently and anticipates that all its clients will ultimately move onto the new platform. The first wave of client switch over is under way with two clients in PoC trials and a third in a model office. In effect, the move from Subscribe is an upgrade and the cost of switch over will be picked up by the client.

NIIT will continue to maintain Subscribe for a minimum of five years, as users migrate onto the new platform. NIIT is about to make improvements to Subscribe to ensure it is kept technically up to date - improvements will include replacing the Adelphi front-end and bringing the back-end up to a modern version of Sequel.

A major difference is that Subscribe is a post-bind system, running processes after submission and quotation, whereas, the new platform is a pre-bind and post-bind system starting at the point of initial case creation and running through to pricing.

Bringing its various insurance software tools and applications under one umbrella will help raise the profile of NIIT’s insurance solutions. The official launch of the new platform is October 1, 2014.