Client Norwich Union Challenge After two large mergers and several acquisitions, Norwich Union needed to consolidate large books of business on an administration system capable of processing 2 million policies, whilst improving service through distribution channels such as the Internet. Solution Norwich Union talked to CSC about co-developing a Web browser-based administration system. Collaborating with carriers in the United States, CSC invested three years and $28 million in CSC's Exceed, an integrated set of software components designed to extend, enhance and evolve insurers' legacy systems. Results Exceed enabled Norwich Union to extend vital services to its brokers and corporate partners through its e-Broking and e-Services Web sites. By creating self-service applications on the Internet Norwich Union has reduced time spent on in-house processing, helping to lower operational costs.

At the height of industry consolidation, with financial sector mergers getting plenty of headlines, the formation of CGU with the merger of General Accident and Commercial Union in 1998 was big news. The £28 billion merger of Norwich Union and CGU in 2000 was even bigger.

The back-to-back mergers created the world’s seventh-largest insurer, Aviva PLC. Aviva, among the top five European life insurers with £200 billion in assets, unified 50 trading names used by the company worldwide. Norwich Union became Aviva’s general insurance arm in the United Kingdom, but after the merger with CGU and several other acquisitions, the UK’s largest insurer had inherited multiple processing systems and a challenging integration problem.

Post-merger Norwich Union immediately began pursuing several key IT strategies aimed at lowering overall costs and improving service. Norwich Union needed to consolidate large books of business on an administration system capable of processing 2 million policies, while improving service through distribution channels such as the Internet.

Rather than cobble together multiple legacy systems on the OS/2 platform, Norwich Union talked to CSC about co-developing a Web browser-based administration system. Collaborating with three other carriers in the United States, CSC invested three years and $28 million in CSC’s Exceed, an integrated set of software components designed to extend, enhance and evolve insurers’ legacy systems.

Web Services for 500 Brokers
Exceed’s advanced architecture allows companies to rapidly deploy business services over the Web. One of Norwich Union’s first projects was to extend Exceed’s core underwriting functions to the company’s brokers through a secure company Web site. In just over a year, more than 500 leading insurance brokers across the UK were using Norwich Union’s e-Broking site to submit new business and endorsements for household and motor insurance over the Internet.

“The feedback we are getting from brokers is that we’re providing a service no one else offers at the moment,” said Jeff Feakins, head of Strategic Systems Development for CSC-based systems. “Exceed is at the heart of that project.”

In addition to reducing paper and improving service to the brokers, Norwich Union is using the Web to reduce the burden on the company’s back office and lower operational costs.

“Exceed has enabled Norwich Union to extend vital services to our brokers and corporate partners through our e-Broking and e-Services Web sites,” said Patrick Snowball, group executive, general insurance, Norwich Union. “By creating self-service applications on the Internet, we are reducing time spent on in-house processing, which is helping to lower our operational costs as well as providing our broker community with information they need, when they need it. Exceed is helping us deliver against our goals to provide exemplary service levels to our customers and partners.”

By facilitating integration with the company’s e-Services Web site, Exceed is helping Norwich Union react quickly to new opportunities with corporate partners, such as banks, building societies and retailers.

“Our corporate partners are quite often looking for things in very short time frames, so we need an architecture that enables us to respond rapidly to those requests and provide the solution quickly,” Feakins said. “Equally important is our technology’s middle layer and backend, because of the volumes of policies we’re processing, it needs to be a robust and stable architecture.”

Advanced Architecture Eases Integration
CSC has supported Norwich Union’s systems for more than a decade. Norwich Union administers nearly 2 million active policies and processes nearly 200,000 claims annually with CSC software. About 2,000 Norwich Union claims personnel use CSC’s claims administration solutions, and bodily injury cases are evaluated with CSC’s Colossus.

Rather than completely replace Norwich Union’s client/server-based policy and claims systems, CSC developed a migration strategy that would allow the company to deploy business services over a Web browser, while protecting Norwich Union’s investments in the underlying DB2 database. That strategy was incorporated in Exceed, which includes a layer of industry-standard XML messaging that separates the browser interface from the database.

Exceed’s open service-oriented architecture provides a set of interfaces that are easily understood and accessed in a network environment. It allows developers to isolate technology within processing layers, thereby reducing the ripple effect of technological changes when they are made within specific layers. Exceed complies with CSC e4, CSC’s exclusive enterprise integration architecture that unifies application software components, new business process management (BPM) systems and workflow tools within a single logical environment.

“Exceed’s architecture gives us the quality of abstraction, which means, particularly in an XML messaging layer, it facilitates the use of existing enterprise code,” said CSC’s Phil Ehlen, director of property and casualty (general) insurance technology and architecture. “The Exceed infrastructure has adapters that allow a user to plug in a newly developed product or use legacy code or modules.”

Web Browser-Based Screens
Because of Exceed’s integration capabilities, insurance companies can deploy front-end screens rich with insurance functions that help the processing staff become more efficient. These capabilities also reduce the level of risk and IT cost associated with launching new products and exploring new distribution channels.

Supporting about 1,000 internal users of CSC underwriting system and 2,000 users of CSC claims systems, Norwich Union’s IT staff routinely face significant challenges in distributing software updates. Add to that hundreds of external users, and Web browser deployment becomes very attractive.

“The beauty of a Web browser solution is that we’re not involved in local implementation of updates,” Feakins said. “If we wish to introduce a new variance, we can do that very rapidly because there’s nothing sitting on the desktop that has to tie in. Our users just need to have ordinary browser software.”

In developing Exceed, CSC held an initial forum on the architectural strategy with more than a dozen insurance companies and received continual feedback from clients at regular meetings of CSC’s user group and client advisory council.

“We look on CSC as a major business partner,” said Norwich Union IT director, general insurance, Alex Robinson. “We work with CSC staff on site and they are embedded in our project management structure. We’ve developed a great relationship with the top management of CSC, and through our participation on CSC’s advisory council, we have had a voice in the development of Exceed. By listening to us, CSC achieved the proper balance between protecting our existing investments in technology, whilst positioning Norwich Union for future growth.”