Client : Global Top-3 insurer headquartered in the UK

The client is among the leading insurance companies of the world, created by the merger of two smaller UK insurance firms in the mid 1990’s. The merged entity is a full-scale insurance service provider covering all segments of insurance activity, including both life and non-life.

As part of its strategic long-term plan to maximize access to high quality low-cost global information systems solution providers, the firm established a relationship with VAST, through VAST’s marketing agent in the UK. The relationship envisaged the establishment of a development centre at VAST with appropriate equipment and facilities, including a high-speed communication link to the client’s offices in the UK. VAST undertook the turnkey execution of the complete redesign of the client’s Claims History Information System.

The project involved the migration of fragmented Claims History Data from a batch system using the older BDAM file management system to a comprehensive DB2 based interactive system to support the underwriting, Claims settlement and accounting processing in the General Insurance Trade. Enhancements were made to incorporate inquiries, reports, one-time and recurring data loading and a transparent 3-layer interface to other applications. Access Routines were developed to provide a common seamless interface to access and manipulate data from any application.

The project consisted of onsite Project Planning, Requirements Study, Analysis & Design phases, followed by development and testing in India at VAST's Chennai center over a six month period. The user acceptance and Implementation phases were executed onsite at the customer's facilities, spread over an eight-week period.

Since the entire development phase of the project was carried out and delivered from off-shore using a 64K link from Chennai, project progress reviews and strategic meetings were conducted on telephone and project reports were exchanged using e-mail, using a standard monitoring and reporting procedure that was specifically developed for the project.