Accenture Launches Cloud-Based New Business and Underwriting Software ... - MarketWatch (press release)

ORLANDO, May 15, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Accenture /quotes/zigman/565535/quotes/nls/acn ACN +0.34% has unveiled a cloud-based version of its award winning life insurance new business and underwriting software. Part of the Accenture Life Insurance Platform, Accenture's life and annuity insurance software suite, the software component is now available with a Software as a Service (SaaS) licensing option, and is designed to help life and annuity insurers drive growth and profitability and expand into new market segments, while helping reduce costs.

"Life insurance and annuity carriers today face intensified pressures to reduce costs and improve efficiencies across the full policy lifecycle in a way that drives market advantage," said Mitchel F. Ludwig product line lead of Accenture Software for life insurance. "Software applications can help insurers achieve high performance in this environment by streamlining the new business and underwriting process, while better analyzing risk and lowering the cost of issuing policies.

"By offering a cloud-based deployment option, we help insurers further reduce costs by allowing them to match their underwriting processing capacity with fluctuating demand. The component delivers leading underwriting templates, rules and processes without the need to host and support a new technology system; this allows for rapid implementation and time-to-value."

The new business and underwriting component of Accenture Life Insurance Platform provides features that help improve efficiencies and reduce costs, including:

-- An automated and configurable rules-based decision engine, which enables life and annuity insurers to rapidly and consistently analyze underwriting risk, reduce the need for manual intervention, and accelerate the new business application process. Based on Accenture's analysis of leading-practice underwriting guidelines, the engine reacts to consumers' application responses by asking additional reflexive questions, and makes a series of underwriting decisions -- including whether to "instant issue," request additional information from third-party sources, or refer the case to an underwriter. The application enables automated workflow processing and requirements tracking for each step of the new business lifecycle, from initial application entry through to policy issue.

-- An underwriting workbench, which enables better collaboration among agents, case managers and underwriters, by allowing them to document, review, track and revise financial and medical underwriting requirements for policy applications. The workbench automatically generates tasks to track actions required on a case, and provides a consolidated view of essential case management data, including impairments, requirements, case notes, related application and reinsurance information.

-- Easy and seamless integration with third-party data and systems to help insurers further streamline and automate the underwriting process and increase the consistency and speed of underwriting. The new business and underwriting component can operate in any application environment, leveraging ACORD-standard messaging to attain seamless integration with insurers' existing systems.

The solution can be delivered through the cloud or as an on-premise application. In an on-premise approach, insurers that have the information technology (IT) resources and capacity to host the system internally, can adapt the solution according to their needs and customize specific underwriting processes.

New Actuarial Engine Unveiled

Accenture has also unveiled a new actuarial calculation engine to help life insurers reduce the time to launch new products. The Accenture Actuarial Calculation Engine, which is also part of Accenture Life Insurance Platform, can be deployed as a standalone solution in support of any legacy third-party IT system.

The calculation engine is a highly configurable software application designed to support standard mathematical, financial, statistical and actuarial calculations that are needed to implement new complex life insurance products. The solution is designed to help insurers meet the needs of a rapidly changing market by featuring advanced capabilities, including:

-- Robust and highly configurable calculation capabilities: the engine provides a comprehensive library of calculation components, including more than 200 ready-to-use templates which define the standard calculations required to support life and annuity products. It also includes pre-configured user functions, actuarial tables and matrices.

-- Extended product definition capacity: the calculation engine is delivered with standard life insurance and annuity components including over 600 standard calculations and over 200 pre-defined product matrices. These calculation components provide the building blocks for product definition. Users can introduce any calculation needed for product development.

-- Streamlined and integrated product testing functionalities: insurers can debug and test new products using a single calculation engine for each step of the product development process. Tables, matrices and calculations that are created can be immediately debugged and tested once all components have been developed.

"Accenture is working very closely with many of the world's leading life and annuity insurers," said Daniele Presutti, managing director of Accenture Life Insurance Services. "This industry experience and knowledge has given us an advantage in building the leading processes and methodologies into our software and enabling us to anticipate market needs. We are leveraging this insight to continuously enhance Accenture Life Insurance Platform and provide a solution that helps life and annuity insurers of all sizes stay ahead of the curve."

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 246,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011. Its home page is www.accenture.com .

Accenture Software combines deep technology acumen with industry knowledge to develop differentiated software products. It offers innovative software-based solutions to enable organizations to meet their business goals and achieve high performance. Its home page is www.accenture.com/software . For Life Insurance software, its home page is www.accenture.com/lifesoftware .

SOURCE: Accenture

                            Accenture            Francois Luu, +33 6 60 53 84 28            francois.luu@accenture.com            or            Sean Conway, + 917 452 6444            sean.k.conway@accenture.com            or            Peter Soh, + 703-947-2571            peter.y.soh@accenture.com                    

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