Thunderhead, the provider of highly-usable multi-channel document technology, and CGI, the information technology and business process services company, have partnered to provide the insurance industry with a single solution for automating the front to back-end administration for all types of insurance product.
By combining GIOS - CGI's leading global insurance administration system - with the Thunderhead Platform, insurance providers can capture customer data, generate quotes and then use this information to create and deliver personalised documents to customers and partners using any channel including print, Web, email, fax, and even interactive TV.
The solution allows insurers to address their business challenges, namely: how to reduce the processing time and cost of completing every transaction, while at the same time dealing with regulatory compliance, the introduction of new products and services and increasing levels of customer service. Thunderhead and GIOS also scale effortlessly to meet with the industry's increasing volumes.
Many insurers have a large number of disparate, legacy IT systems, which require expensive maintenance and management to enable the systems to communicate. In contrast, GIOS provides one single, flexible infrastructure that can support the administration of all forms of insurance products including Life, Pensions and Investment as well as non-life - Personal (Motor, Home etc.), Commercial and Health.
GIOS gathers and stores all data related to customers, defining their roles (e.g. policyholder, driver, beneficiary or claimant) and relationships (e.g. husband, wife, employer or employee) to create a complete view of each customer. Policy information and business rules can then be incorporated with this data to assemble multi-channel documents, such as quotations, claim forms, policy schedules, credit agreements and invoice/premium breakdowns that are personalised to each recipient and delivered through their channel of choice.
"A typical insurance firm will process and generate documents for more than one million transactions per week," comments Glen Manchester, CEO of Thunderhead. "This solution can reduce the cost of every one of these transactions, while allowing firms to exploit new customer service initiatives such as putting documents online or sending SMS messages to customers."
"The insurance industry continues to face business challenges as it works to increase efficiency whilst raising the quality of its customer service," said Martin Houston, head of GIOS business development at CGI. "This partnership with Thunderhead enables us to extract the information already captured in GIOS to form high-quality, personalised multi-channel documents that increase the satisfaction and profitability of agents, customers and brokers."
About CGI
Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent information technology and business process services firms in North America. CGI and its affiliated companies employ approximately 25,000 professionals. CGI provides end-to-end IT and business process services to clients worldwide from offices in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific as well as from centres of excellence in India and Canada. CGI's annualised revenue run rate is currently CDN$3.8 billion (US$2.8 billion) and at June 30, 2004, CGI's order backlog was CDN$13.2 billion (US$9.8 billion). CGI's shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB) and are included in the S&P/TSX Composite Index as well as the S&P/TSX Capped Information Technology and MidCap Indices.
Website: www.cgi.com
About Thunderhead
A leader in the document generation industry, Thunderhead Ltd. is focused on developing next-generation technology that automates the creation and assembly of high-volume multi-channel documents. Launched in November 2003, Thunderhead already numbers some of the world's leading financial services organisations as customers and our product is sold globally to Documentum customers as Dynamic Content Services. Thunderhead is the world's first document generation platform to be built purely around XML, and the first to use natural language algorithms and usability theory to put the business user (rather than IT specialists) firmly in control of the document generation process. For further information please visit www.thunderhead.com.
UK PRESS ENQUIRIES:
Thunderhead
Jo Skerry, PR
Mobile: +44 (0) 7941 317 847
Office: + 44 (0) 1327 850583
Email: jskerry@thunderhead.com
CGI
Lisa Carter / Eleanor Pinkerton
Portfolio Communications Ltd.
Tel: 020 7240 6959
E-mail: lisa.carter@portfoliocomms.com
Ref: 04-291
