References

ING Reinsurance, Minneapolis

A new reinsurance solution for life business

Activity: Reinsurance Company
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Organization: 860 Accounts, 1000 transaction per week, 3 GB of data

Project Overview: The RAPTOR Project

Objectives:

Revise the existing IT environment.

The bulk of the “pre-Raptor” Group Reinsurance administration is handled in Genius, the core AS400 based processing system, purchased in 1991. Because of Genius's lack of flexibility and reporting capabilities, ING Re Group has had to create many “satellite systems” and “manual processes” to satisfy administrative needs. Genius's inability to provide information for key business performance questions has proven difficult and costly. More specifically, the current technical architecture and overall system context creates the following issues as related to the RAROC risk categories.

It is extremely difficult to enhance and maintain functionality of the current system; many changes require external contract work by the Genius vendor, Rebus, or enhancements to one of our internally developed satellite systems (28 satellite systems in total).
There are many cases of redundantly stored data in our core Genius system and our satellite systems. This leads to “out of synch” conditions and difficulty in determining which data should be considered the reliable source. This also causes the potential risk of greater variability in reported business results.
There is an inability to enforce referential integrity and controls in both data and processes, because many of the systems are “disconnected” and do not interface with each other. Contracts could be terminated in Genius and remain active in other systems, causing an inaccurate account of the current situation.
The current system does not have the capability of administering all aspects of our contracts. Thus, many manual processes have been created to handle these discrepancies. Time spent on value-added activities is minimized due to the time spent executing these manual processes. For example: 67% of experience refund accounts are handled manually; all medical claim adjudication is done by hand; 85% of retro contracts are administered outside of the system on spreadsheets. Additionally, premium on 46 contracts, accounting for 27% of premium volume, have to be calculated manually because of limitations in the way genius calculates earned premium.
There are numerous non-standardized and cumbersome user interfaces; end users must learn multiple systems to perform similar functions. For example, the claims area uses 15 different systems and the retro area uses 9 different systems, making it very difficult to train new users.
Reporting is incomplete and inconsistent in our current system due to the various “satellite systems” and “manual processes” in place. To produce many reports, individuals are required to download data from the genius system into a spreadsheet, then manually enter data from one spreadsheet into another, then add to and manipulate the data, then combine the information into another spreadsheet and transform it to make the report more readable. One monthly report can take up to a day to create.

Benefits to ING US:

Increased data integrity – Data will be more secure and consistent due to a reduction in redundant information and manual work-arounds, improving both the data and the processes. The improvement in data will decrease the potential variability in actual results to plan.
Risk reduction – Many manual work-arounds will be eliminated thus reducing the dependency on key individuals. The consistent nature of the application will provide staff with increased opportunity for cross-functional assignments and knowledge of processes will be distributed amongst more staff.
Greater access and control – Raptor will be developed internally and our IT area will have full access to make changes to the system, something that cannot be done with our current system. This will allow ING Re IT to have control of system security allowing users to perform tasks while accommodating privacy laws. There will also be a reduced number of satellite systems that have to be coordinated.
Credibility with customers – ING Rewill be better able to provide customers more timely and accurate information. Proceeding with Raptor also shows ING Re is investing in the future and making decisions for the long term.
Operational and functional efficiency – Improvements in processes will allow business staff to spend more time on value-added activities.
Underwriting Effectiveness – The integration of systems and data along with improvements to processes will allow for more accurate pricing, more comprehensive exposure analysis, and more effective profitability reporting.
Flexibility to grow and change with market demand – It will be easier to add new products and functionality to the new system.

Why Wynsure was chosen:

Cheaper and faster than competition
Good references from existing customers
Proven track record with other organizations within ING
A component based system
Consultants experienced in the Reinsurance Business

Wynsure Implementation:

Aggressive timeline: The application development phase spans 15 months, with monthly iterative delivery cycle and a data migration plan conducted in parallel.
A significant portion of the application was developed remotely in Bangalore, India.
The first release to the production environment occurred in March 2004 with the rest of the application going fourth quarter of 2005.

Business Functions Implemented:

In addition to replacing the existing Group Reinsurance legacy application, the following sub projects are concurrently being developed and are considered to be within project scope:

Multi-company and location administration
Quote logging and tracking
Processing of all bound Contract arrangements
Administration of retrocession agreements, renewals, premium and claims processing
Premium processing which includes calculation and reporting of experience refunds, overdue premiums, and suspense maintenance
Administration of claims, which includes automated and assisted claim adjudication, claim payments, claim reporting, reserves and Rose information
Finance/Accounting processing including bank reconciliation, exchange rate processing, earned premium calculations and the PeopleSoft interface and eDS
The development and testing of all interface components necessary to connect the new Group Reinsurance Administration system to the following systems: eDs, Exchange Rates, Lotus Notes, Document Management (Optika Acorde), PeopleSoft, Risk Concentration.

Technical Summary

Deployment Environment:

eWam and Wyde Framework
Wyde Web deployment strategy utilizing standard Microsoft client environment (C++ code / win2000 platform / Oracle DB).
System integration and interface with the following:
- Optika Imaging system
- PeopleSoft eDS
- PeopleSoft General Ledger
- Crystal Reports report viewer
- Business Objects Reporting tool
- Oanda Foreign Exhange Rates