5 Ways Exaxe is Helping IT Managers facing Budget Cuts

The economic downturn has resulted in IT budgets being slashed and many key projects being delayed, postponed, or even scrapped. As a consequence how organisations are buying and implementing IT has changed – making Exaxe’s solutions even more advantageous in the following ways:

1. An immediate payback - most customers are delaying making decisions on any project that cannot demonstrate an immediate pay-back. They want to see results fast, or solve an immediate problem and they won’t just take the vendor’s word for it. They need evidence, or more to the point justification that is both quantified and verified. At Exaxe we can demonstrate an immediate payback and back it up with lots of reference customers.

2. Cutting the cost – there is widespread re-negotiation of contracts, with customers seeking to cut back on rates, project days, etc. With fewer new projects starting and increased vendor competition, suppliers have no choice but to adhere to customer requests for cost reductions. Exaxe’s solutions have always had a cost advantage – typically representing less than 20% of the traditional cost.

3. Zero tolerance for project over-runs, or delays. Tighter control of spending and more disciplined project management of all IT initiatives ranging from migration to virtualisation. Our agile methodologies for project delivery, including regular iterations, or releases, is more important than ever before.

4. Point solutions – in this present climate few IT managers and directors are out to change the world, or even their major systems. The focus has turned to point solutions, that will solve an immediate pain. Of course, these solutions must easily integrate with existing and future technologies. At Exaxe enable managers to tackle specific priorities and delivery initiatives in sequence, without a major overhaul of the back-end.

5. An end to the Big Vendor bias? ‘We only buy HP, or IBM’ is something that vendors are hearing less these days. The trend towards consolidating all technologies with a single vendor is dead. Even if this had proven successful, the budgets are not there for it at present.

Norwich Union Implements Next Generation Illustrations Technology

Illustrate Plus to support new business illustrations in European Expansion

Dublin, Ireland, February 2009. Exaxe, the specialist IT solutions provider for the Life and Pensions industry, today announced it has signed an agreement with Norwich Union International to licence and implement its next generation illustration and calculation solution, Illustrate Plus.

Maureen Breslin, Director of Operations and IT in Norwich Union International said “We selected Illustrate Plus following a comprehensive market evaluation and competitive tendering exercise. This functionally rich and innovative solution will position Norwich Union International for further growth by allowing it to launch new products quickly and to achieve operational efficiencies and customer service improvements. The flexibility, ease of integration and short implementation timeframe afforded by Exaxe’s component based Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) was key to our selection of Illustrate Plus”

Illustrate Plus is a key component within the Exaxe suite of life and pensions solutions. Illustrate Plus is a web based illustration and calculation system that supports new and existing business illustrations for all types of life, pension, investment and annuity products. Calculation parameters, screen flow and documentation requirements are easily defined by the user through the Illustrate Plus Product Development Application, allowing for the speedy launch of new products or product variations.

Philip Naughton, Exaxe’s Director, Business Development said, “We are delighted to add a growing and innovative company like Norwich Union International to our expanding list of customers. This deal follows our selection by MGM Advantage to license our administration solution, LifeCycle Plus. Our clients are proving they can launch new products faster, administer them more efficiently and respond with greater flexibility to the marketplace using our component based offering” said Naughton.

About Norwich Union International

Norwich Union International is part of Aviva, the world’s fifth-largest insurance group and the UK’s leading insurance services provider. Aviva provide security, stability and protection to 45 million customers worldwide. Norwich Union International specialises in providing tax-efficient offshore investment solutions to a broad customer base of individuals, corporate investors and trustees.

About Exaxe

Exaxe® is a specialist solution provider for the Life & Pensions industry. Exaxe helps companies such as MGM Advantage, Eureko Group and Scottish Widows launch new products faster, administer them more efficiently and respond with greater flexibility to the marketplace. With offices in Dublin and the Netherlands, we provide proven leading edge, front, middle and back office solutions, to more effectively manage product development, illustrations, channel distribution, commissions & agency management and policy administration.

Contacts Media contact
Philip Naughton Mark Houlding
Director, Business Development Rostrum Communications
Exaxe mark@rostrumpr.com
Email: philip.naughton@exaxe.com +44 (0) 777 3782 520
Tel: +353 1 2999100

The 5 Secrets of Success at MGM Advantage

Exaxe’s Invest Plus solution enabled MGM Advantage to launch a sophisticated new annuity product in just 16-week on a new platform. Most interestingly, this was achieved without a major overhaul of IT infrastructure. The 5 secrets to success were:

1. Time to market reduced

By centralising the management of the product development process, MGM Advantage reduced time-to-market for new product launches from months to days. Also, product changes could now be implemented rapidly.

2. Processes automated

MGM Advantage now delivers instant, online enhanced annuity quotes, available 24/7, 365 days a year. These quotes can be issued on the spot and can be viewed on screen and printout.

3. Processing streamlined

Applications can now be completed online with easy and intuitive data entry and no re-keying. This results in fewer errors through online validation and reduced transaction costs.

4. Improved process management

Invest Plus provides MGM Advantage with complete hierarchy management – from registration to approval and authorization – for individual agents, firms and panels.

5. Instantaneous compliance

In an industry where the burden of compliance weighs heavily, MGM Advantage now benefits from a system that ensures adherence through templates, clauses and variables for contract-specific product documentation.

Take a Look the L&P Organisation of 2012

I am going to ask you to forget about next quarter for a moment and even next year. Instead, I am going to ask you to fast forward to 2012 and to what the ‘typical life’ and pension organisation will look like.

More specifically, I would like to look under the hood of the Life and Pensions organisation of 2012, in terms of the IT systems and infrastructure likely to be in place.

Where to start? Well with the market I guess. So first, let’s look at two key predictions as to how the industry itself will change between now and 2012.

Firstly, pretty much all the industry experts predict that there will be fewer players in 2012, with consolidation occurring at a global level. I would go as far as to predict that the Western European market is likely to consolidate around less than 30 major players, with an array of innovative and specialist niche players operating at a national level.

Secondly, most people also agree that the industry’s products will be more innovative and diverse, a trend reinforced by the blurring of the distinction between the various financial products available to customers. I believe that new products will shape the future of the industry.

So, if that is the big picture – a future of fewer competitors and more products – then what is the detail in terms of the IT systems and infrastructure required by life and pensions organisations in 2012? Well, here are our predictions:

1. In line with others, we predict that over 50% of policy administration in 2012 will be outsourced, as organisations focus on customer relationships, marketing and product innovation, as opposed to administration and IT.

2. The majority of those that have not outsourced will have rationalised core systems by 2012, with mergers and acquisitions being a major factor here. However, the promised benefits of this systems rationalisation will not have materialised for many. The new systems implemented will prove to be a step in the right direction, as opposed to the total solution in terms of agility, efficiency, reporting, etc.

3. Any remaining legacy systems will be marginalised to the administration of closed and aging books of business.

4. A more agile approach to IT implementation will be employed by up to 75% of the industry with the waterfall methods becoming out-dated.

5. The industry will have got better at buying IT, adopting a much more discerning and rigorous approach to vendor and solutions selection.

6. There will be a trend towards fixed price IT and in-sourcing as well as outsourcing administration and IT services.

7. SOA will be the dominant standard within the industry.

For our part at Exaxe, we like to think our solutions, such as LifeCycle Plus®, represent the future of life and pensions policy administration today, enabling maximum process efficiency, rapid time to market for even the most sophisticated products and optimal business agility, or responsiveness.

That is thanks to true the SOA based architecture that makes it open and flexible in response to a fast changing marketplace.

Norman Carroll, CEO, Exaxe
Solutions for: Life & Pensions Administration, Product Configuration, Illustrations, Commission & Channel Management

Why Legacy Systems Struggle with New Products

The running of any L&P business depends on a range of IT systems, built up over decades.

Each individual system has a specific role to play – one for which it was specifically developed be that in the 1970s, 80’s, 90’s or 00’s.

They represent a complex coalition, sometimes uneasy, of technologies, languages and standards.

Legacy systems were written to enable organisations to compete in a life and pensions industry very different to that of today. That is why they struggle to cope with new and increasingly complex; products, channels and markets.

In particular, they struggle to speedily launch new and more innovative products.

There are 3 reasons why legacy systems struggle in terms of bringing new products to market:

1. Bringing a new product to market on legacy systems is slow and expensive because it requires complex custom development, testing and integration.

Moreover, such projects are, as is the case with any software development project, prone to delays and over-runs.

How much is expensive? Well, it is not unusual for such projects to take more than a year and result in seven figure costs!

A classic 1970s Jaguar sports car is a wonderful thing, but you can’t expect it to accelerate, handle or corner like a modern day executive saloon. The same applies to legacy systems – trying to get them to perform like a new system is not practical.

2. Because legacy systems are inherently inflexible, they generally require a compromise in terms of; administrative efficiency, service quality levels and degree of management control (information, compliance, reporting, etc.).

That means they are likely to fall short in terms of business expectations, particularly in terms of process automation and optimisation.

Anybody with enough training and instruction can dance Swan Lake, but that doesn’t mean they are going be graceful or elegant at doing it. The same applies to legacy systems, perhaps they can be re-written to handle new products, but clearly with less than optimal levels of sophistication and efficiency.

3. As is the case with code based procedural systems, once software changes have been made, they can quickly be rendered out of date by the moves of a competitor, or the changes of a regulator.

In a continually changing marketplace flexibility is a major challenge.

In too many organisations simple tasks, such as; changing the rates of calculation, or the fax number on a template requires writing, or re-writing code. But, it shouldn’t need to involve IT at all.

At Exaxe, we enable organisations to launch new products and administer them more efficiently, but without an overhaul of existing IT systems. That means significant saving in terms of costs, with solutions implemented in as little as 21 weeks.

Norman Carroll, CEO, Exaxe
Solutions for: Life & Pensions Administration, Product Configuration, Illustrations, Commission & Channel Management

Getting ‘Back to Basics’

I have been in the Life and Pensions industry for a long time – long enough to have witnessed almost the entire evolution of IT within the sector.

I remember green screens and 3.5 inch floppy disks, as well as the punch card and magnetic tape!
I have seen IT move from the margins to being absolutely essential to the daily operation, as well as the strategic direction, of every financial institution. All good, I hear you say. Well, yes and no.

Over the past decade I have noticed a trend where many Life and Pensions organisations have become more like technology companies and less like financial institutions. Others have noticed too that IT is taking more; management time, more budget and more manpower.

Many Life and Pension Companies are ‘IT Centric’

Many Life and Pensions organizations could be described as ‘IT Centric’. That is their products; strategies and budgets are being shaped increasingly by IT, rather than by the market, or the customer. From being an enabling technology, IT has taken over.

Take the issue of getting new products to market. Although clearly this should be market-driven, most organisations are only as innovative as their IT systems will allow.

For most organisations the real challenges in terms of launching new products are technical, not managerial, actuarial, marketing, or channel related.

Why is Everything a £20 Million Project?

Few people blink anymore when IT budgets cost into the hundreds of millions and projects run on for years.

But I have noticed something of a backlash beginning to appear. This is typified by the exasperation of a CFO in one of the UKs Top 5 life assurance companies, who proclaimed – ‘why does every IT project cost 20 million and require 18 months to deliver?’ ‘A very good question indeed’ I replied.

More and more L&P companies are getting ‘back to basics’. That is focusing more on what they do best – manufacturing and selling financial products, and less on IT. They are recognising that IT is not the business – IT is just the enabler.

That means managers are placing new demands on external IT vendors and internal project teams alike. With outsourcing options on the table in many organisations, decisions regarding major IT systems projects are being cast in a new light.

One positive impact is that IT vendors must focus less on selling technology and more on helping organisations achieve their business goals. At Exaxe, this is something we welcome.

Norman Carroll, CEO, Exaxe
Solutions for: Life & Pensions Administration, Product Configuration, Illustrations, Commission & Channel Management

Organizations rethink how they buy IT

As Vendor Scepticism Reaches New Heights Organisations Are Re-thinking How They Buy I.T.

Many institutions have been learning the hard way that vendor promises are not always what they seem.

Indeed, a number of high profile instances where organisations have switched vendor mid-project, has caused many IT Directors to rethink how they buy IT.

Although major IT projects often start with a blaze of publicity, their failure is generally a hushed affair.

Yet, it is a small industry and the word quickly gets around when major IT projects derail and relationships go sour.

The Risk Involved

There is a high risk of failure in selecting policy administration and related systems.

According to the ‘word on the street’ as many as 5 large life and pensions organisations have, despite major sunk investments, changed vendor over the past 18 month.

That means that if you are a large life and pensions organisation there is as much as a 20% chance of running into problems with the selection, or implementation of new policy administration and related systems.

For an industry that specialises in risk, that level of project failure is very disappointing.

Managing the Risk

There is an upside to this story however: – the way Life and Pensions companies buy IT is changing. In particular there is a strengthening of technology and vendor due diligence.

Vendor promises – buyers have heard them all before: – rapid implementation – total flexibility – seamless integration and so on – are now greeted with much scepticism. But, how to Validate Vendor Claims?

The words contained in vendor brochures, analyst reviews, or RFP responses don’t mean a lot.

Buyers are looking for the validation and proof that can ultimately only be gained by spending time with the vendor’s different customers (including those they would rather you don’t meet), and ideally by means of small scale pilot projects, or trial implementations.

The Simple Principle Applies: Try Before You Buy!
When it comes to policy administration solutions ‘seeing is believing!’

That is why, at Exaxe, we enable our customers and potential customers to pilot our systems in a wide variety of different ways.

That means seeing first-hand how our solutions can take one of their new products to market, automate key processes and integrate with existing systems. Our view is that buyers should ‘try before they buy’.

Norman Carroll, CEO, Exaxe
Solutions for: Life & Pensions Administration, Product Configuration, Illustrations, Commission & Channel Management