Regulatory Compliance

HCL has been dedicated to support regulatory reporting on an ongoing basis. We have from time to time been engaged in carving out enormous data from disparate sources and complex data models to ensure smooth onsite inspection by regulatory authorities. The experience of being engaged with some of the leading insurance companies in USA, Europe and APAC has enabled us to be completely in tune with the regulatory requirements of these regions.

Representative Engagement

Providing support in complying to Regulatory requirement

Business Intelligence and Data-warehousing

Insurance companies have been experimenting with aligning products that fit within each of their channels and then working to achieve efficiencies to maximize growth. To do this successfully, insurers must have the ability to perform profitability analysis by channel and segmentation, analysis by both customer and channel. Building these analytical models will allow the organization to align the right products with the right channels

The Business Intelligence and Data-warehousing tools developed by HCL help Insurance companies

• Provide underwriting and exposure managers, complete and consistent risk and exposure reports
• Offer executives consistent analysis along with key performance indicators to manage fiscal integrity, reserves, profitability, rate structures etc.
• Offer actuaries parameterized triangulation reports instantly to set policy rates instead of the unduly long time that it involves otherwise
• Consolidate "islands of insurance data" into consistent, actionable information
• Correlate data across claims and policy administration
• Provide a consistent data warehouse for reporting from data in multiple systems
• Present a single version of the truth for state audits

Representative Engagements

Data warehousing for a P&C Insurance Company

Implementing Business Intelligence tool

Solutions Accelerators for insurance Service delivery

Application Portfolio Optimization/Outsourcing for Insurance Companies(APO)

Business Relevance

With the increasing pressures on IT as a result of business growth, market demand, frequent product launches, mergers and acquisition, new technologies coming into play etc., the IT environment in some longstanding insurance companies is complex.

The complexities are in duplication of business logic across applications, multiple applications with minimal differentiation etc. Companies would like to have robust and lean set of applications with reduced cost of ownership. HCL APO methodology addresses this.

About the IP

APO is a structured approach to provide a plan to optimize IT applications of the enterprise. A recent industry study indicated that on average, an insurer spends over 60% of the IT budget on application sustenance. Application Portfolio Optimization satisfies multiple business objectives including improving business functionality, increasing speed to market, reducing processing time and lowering sustenance costs.

HCL's collaborative relationships with leading insurers over the past decade have enabled it to acquire a strong business —centric approach to IT solutions. HCL's global insurance practice has built its APO methodology for insurers by leveraging this strong foundation and its technical expertise. The APO methodology can be applied across multiple lines of business —life, non-life and reinsurance and across multiple lines of business.

Methodology

HCL's APO team will assess existing systems, understand the current application portfolio and together with the customer, prepare an IT Vision document that articulates a targeted future state. The document will identify gaps between the current and future states and articulate a transition road map to bridge the gaps.

The study will include a series of economic validation metrics, such as current cost of ownership, future cost of ownership, capital expenditures, and return on investment. The APO methodology will identify potential applications as candidates for consolidation, elimination, recommend build versus buy decisions, as well as suggest maintenance and system enhancement opportunities.

Business Benefits

• Lean application portfolio resulting in lower portfolio maintenance and operation cost
• APO recommendation in line with insurance industry trends, regulations and technology, with a transition plan that suits the company's short-term business and financial objectives.
• Improved time to market of new insurance products

IBzE —Insurance Business Enabler

Market dynamics and advancements in technology have created significant challenges for insurance technology leadership including:

• Making relevant information and business transactions directly available to stakeholders with minimum disturbance to existing systems
• Increasing competitive pressure to speed up time to market for new, innovative products
• Ongoing importance of reducing operational costs while increasing service levels
• The implementation of ACORD-XML as an industry standard for transaction integration

Each of these developments has created complex challenges for IT in the insurance industry with the dual challenge of increasing ROI and reducing cost.

Business Component Library

It is a critical component of the IBzE framework, which provides the business blueprint to create innovative business solutions. It uses the concepts of workflow, document management and business rule engines to provide technological advantage to the user.

J2EE Infrastructure Component and Utilities

The J2EE infrastructure component and utilities provide the application developer a suite of components that can be used from within java-based applications to provide all types of basic services. These components provide the fundamental building blocks to develop the application.

ACORD-XML Adapters

The ACORD XML Adapter integrates existing systems with any external system (within or outside the insurer's enterprise), by providing the essential two-way translation to ACORD-XML type format from legacy transaction objects.

Business Benefits

• Easily customizable and extendable frameworks built to industry standards on J2EE / XML
• Seamless integration of applications and dataflow using ACORD-XML standards
• Readily available business components that accelerate the application development process
• Reduced time-to-market for new products/innovations.
• Enables greater participation of business users with IT in development thus lowering costs

Data Migration Tool

About the IP

With the benefits offered by newer technologies in terms of flexibility, scalability and maintenance, many organizations are reengineering their applications. In doing so, major concerns are complexity and efforts involved in data migration HCL has developed a Mainframe based tool to help teams handle large data migrations. It reduces the effort required in development of data migration programs.

Features

• Supports both Fixed block (FB) and Variable block (VB) files commonly used in insurance companies
• Mapping - facilitates mapping between source and target structures
• Allows Transformation of data
• Provision to call external routines to obtain data from external sources
• Migration of data from one file structure to another based on established mapping
• Reporting - Audit reports are generated automatically during mapping and copying

Business Benefits

• Significantly reduce the cost of data migration
• Errors arising due to data migration are lowered since the tool has been tested
• Detailed audit reports generated
• Highly customizable

NetArchitect+

Business Relevance

Insurance companies are investing significant efforts and money in building large web-based application. However architecting large web applications takes significant effort and time. It also involves extensive effort required to set up frameworks for application development. Hence there is a need for a tool to significantly reduce and simplfy the process of architecting new solutions

About the IP

HCL has developed .NetArchitect+ to generate .NET framework solutions based on customer-chosen architectural patterns. The generated solution can be Web, Windows or Mobile with an ACORD XML interface for Insurance applications. Additionally, the .NetArchitect+ supports a variety of programming languages.

Features

The key features of the tool include

• Dynamically generates an architectural framework solution with various patterns
• Supports multiple databases including SQL Server, Oracle, DB2
• Supports COM+, Remoting and Web services
• Support Help generation and exception handling and error logging
• Generates documentation —Microsoft MSDN Format

Technology

The application has been developed using .NET and extensively uses XML and XSL

Business Benefits

• .NetArchitect+ can be easily used in the development of a variety of .NET applications including those in a Windows, browser or mobile environment.
• Easily customizable and extendable frameworks built to industry standards
• Seamless integration of applications and dataflow using ACORD-XML standards
• Faster application development
• Reduction in application startup efforts by 30-40%
• Standardized code generated reduces errors in application