Life Modernization

With a goal of five percent annual growth, our client needed to modernize their Life division’s core systems to sustain projected growth. A key aspect of this modernization was to increase process automation and efficiency, due to the expectation of increased customers and service and support processes moving forward. In its current state, this client needed forty-five to sixty days to process an application, an unacceptable amount of time in a rapidly modernizing industry. Further, a timeline of roughly eighteen to twenty-four months to create new or update existing products in the life division was similarly unacceptable. The market motivation for creating faster and more robust services and processes was to meet customer expectations by enhancing the overall customer experience. This would be accomplished by reducing the time for processing applications and for creating new products. The insurer also sought better self-service capabilities for both the customer and agents as part of the modernization.

The engagement began with a current state business analysis. In completing the analysis, X by 2 highlighted the fact that from a technology perspective the Life company was effectively part of the P&C line of business. That meant that most of the life business functions were part of larger corporate functions, including the life claims function. Among other observations, X by 2 identified a completely manual vendor integration process wherein individuals were required to log into vendor websites in order to receive integration requirements.

As part of the current state business analysis, X by 2 identified pain points within the client’s Life division. This identification process covered several areas of the business, including new business and underwriting, policyholder and agent self-service, quoting, among several others. Through system analysis and individual interviews, X by 2 created a list of current state pain points in order to understand what the future state should address. This also led to the creation of a current state technical architecture to document the Life division’s technology operations. This technical analysis identified the legacy policy system’s many limitations as a result of its home-built legacy Cobol construction and customization. Additionally, the database in use was sub-optimized by using different schemas for different applications with unique table names for each schema.

After identifying the current state and the associated pain points, X by 2 conducted a buy vs. build analysis of the current market offerings. This process started with a broad evaluation of the market for potential product candidates before diving into a detailed analysis that mapped the client’s functional pain points to a product’s ability to solve them. Other factors analyzed included scalability and maintainability, ease of integration and customization, and total cost of ownership. Following this analysis, X by 2 concluded that the market did not have any good product offerings for the client’s life core system.

After concluding that building a custom solution was the best option for this client, given the current state of the Life product marketplace – X by 2 created a 5-year horizon future state architecture. From there, a detailed implementation roadmap was created, including recommendations on project organization and team structure. X by 2 successfully led the implementation of the new system and continues to provide leadership for other modernization efforts for the Life division of the carrier. These areas include the creation of agent portals to streamline quoting and application submission, the integration of the Life ODS with internal and external entities, and a reduction in policy issuance timing, all while providing better visibility of the process for agents and policyholders.