CGI's Global Insurance Open Solution guarantees good health to leading Irish insurer

“Not only does CGI bring a state-of-the-art solution to Vhi Healthcare, it also has a proven track record that speaks for itself. Our project team have an extremely good relationship with CGI and have found its people to not only be of a very high calibre but also to be extremely flexible and willing to solve problems as they arise. They have been competent, professional and highly focused on meeting our needs and we certainly look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.”

John Creedon, IT Director

Since 1957, Vhi Healthcare has been providing health insurance for people throughout Ireland. Currently providing for the health insurance needs of nearly 1.6 million people or over 40% of the Irish population, Vhi Healthcare has become the market leader for health insurance in Ireland with more than 80% of the market share.

The Challenge
Vhi Healthcare is proud of its reputation as one of Ireland's most recognised and trusted healthcare brands. To sustain its position as Ireland's premier health insurer, the organisation is continually adapting to market competition and ensuring its customers receive the very best the industry has to offer in terms of both service and product.

With administration cost ratios that are regarded as among the lowest in the industry, at typically around 8-9% of premium income, one of Vhi Healthcare's greatest challenges is to find new ways of further improving efficiency levels.

One of the ways in which Vhi Healthcare was keen to increase efficiency was by providing a more integrated approach to its customers through one central administration system. The thirty year-old system that administered its core business often required duplication of effort and increased the need for manual processes. All of this was detracting from efficiency and adding to the cost of doing business.

Vhi Healthcare also required a solution that would enable it to rapidly bring more products to market and respond quickly to the market's changing needs.

To find the right solution, Vhi Healthcare decided to undertake a thorough review of the whole insurance administration marketplace including many of the insurance industry's leading IT suppliers. It discovered that one product, GIOS, was far more advanced than the competition in terms of architecture, design and compatibility. Vhi Healthcare was also impressed by CGI's experience and knowledge of both the Irish insurance market and the health insurance business.

The Strategy
CGI recommended the joint undertaking of an initial business analysis study to clarify the insurer's requirements and identify any unique Vhi Healthcare needs. The study was completed within four months. Using the findings as a basis, the two companies entered into a contract to produce a GIOS template that would not only fully achieve Vhi Healthcare's specific requirements, but would also satisfy the needs for the healthcare marketplace in general.

Commenting on the study, Michael Keaney, General Manager for Individual & Corporate Business at Vhi Healthcare, said, “Our initial study with CGI was a great success and resulted in a shared understanding of what we wanted to achieve and how to guarantee it was accomplished.”

Highly flexible and component-based, GIOS covers all aspects of administration and provides dynamic control of the entire underwriting and rating processes. The Vhi Healthcare solution also included CGI's latest Universal Parameter Manager (UPM). UPM allows the configuration of new products quickly and simply and is essential for rapid delivery of new products to market.

Vhi Healthcare successfully migrated from its legacy systems to GIOS following extensive System, Migration and User Acceptance testing. Following the implementation, CGI also continues to provide ongoing support and maintenance for the core GIOS system.

The Technology

Client server implementation for 300-400 users, consisting of:

• Primarily PCs
• Additional terminal servers
• Oracle database residing on a HP VMS server

The Results
The scalability within GIOS now gives Vhi Healthcare the ability to further grow its business. John Creedon, IT Director, Vhi Healthcare, explains, “It is vital for us to be able to demonstrate a real responsiveness to our market and this means being able to introduce new products quickly and efficiently. The Vhi Healthcare brand is strong and as a highly scalable system, GIOS enables us to bring a new product range to market quicker than our previous legacy system allowed.”

Providing a simple, unified administration process, the data structure and process model within GIOS guarantees that information need only be entered once for Vhi Healthcare's entire insurance administration business, significantly improving customer service and reducing administration time and the associated costs.

The accounting and billing module within GIOS that enables real-time billing, is just one example of how GIOS will help Vhi Healthcare to meet its customers' needs more effectively. GIOS automatically processes how a customer is to be invoiced, how an agent or supplier is to be paid, or how money is to be transferred from one account to another. GIOS totally guarantee's the integrity of the ledger and has been customised to meet Vhi Healthcare's specific requirements.

The new solution also seamlessly integrates with the company's existing legacy claims systems to ensure Vhi Healthcare achieves a holistic view of its entire business chain from the supplier to the customer.

John Creedon, Vhi Healthcare, comments, “GIOS is a highly functional solution, developed specifically for the insurance industry. It brings us increased flexibility and is easily customised, which is vital to us moving forward.”

“Not only does CGI bring a state-of-the-art solution to Vhi Healthcare, it also has a proven track record that speaks for itself,” continues John. “Our project team have an extremely good relationship with CGI and have found its people to not only be of a very high calibre but also to be extremely flexible and willing to solve problems as they arise. They have been competent, professional and highly focussed on meeting our needs and we certainly look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.”