OPAL supports leading Bancassurer with direct to consumer protection product

Case Study: OPAL supports leading Bancassurer with direct to consumer protection product

A large UK Bancassurer approached OPAL in 2014 to support the launch of a new digital term assurance product. This product had direct visibility to the client’s main board, as it was the first to be launched in support of their innovative digital sales and distribution strategy.

For over 20 years OPAL has worked with many UK Banks and Insurers, earning an excellent reputation in all aspects of product design, build, promotion, implementation and administration. OPAL is an agile organisation with a highly experienced team and excellent, highly configurable, systems which enable new products to be brought to market in a matter of weeks. It was a combination of these capabilities plus excellent market insight and knowledge of competitor products and procedures that convinced the customer to approach OPAL.

CHOICE OF SOLUTIONS PROPOSED

The new product is offered across several distribution brands and incorporates a simple online underwriting process which determines a customer’s suitability for cover and premium at the point of application.

OPAL has proven capability and flexibility in developing both interactive customer-facing quote and apply websites as well as market leading web enabled self-service product administration systems. We proposed comprehensive solutions for both the website and product administration system. Our client had recently invested heavily in expanding their ‘in-house’ web capability and on this occasion required web development to remain with them. OPAL focused on building the product administration system and links to the client’s web pages. The project had a 16 week development plan to meet our client’s required ‘go-live’ date.

OPAL’s own richly functional, product administration system handles every aspect of policy administration from initial application and fulfilment of policy documentation through managing rate tables, underwriting, premium collection management, customer amendments, cancellation management and claims handling to full financial reporting, reconciliation (including reinsurer reports, premium and commission payments - down to policy level) and an extensive suite of management information.

COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

The success of this project exemplifies the benefits of the collaborative style of working which OPAL offers. This starts from first contact with OPAL and comes into its own once the requirements gathering phase commences. This was undertaken by the respective project teams resulting in a comprehensive technical specification being produced within 4 weeks. The process brought together expertise and knowledge from within both organisations to ensure requirements and ideas from our client’s product development team were delivered to market in the optimal way for their customers.

OPAL worked closely with the client’s IT security team to ensure they were satisfied their requirements were fully met in terms of both data and system security. OPAL’s embedded ISO 27001 security standards made this a very straightforward process. Encryption protocols were established between the client’s product application website and the OPAL system to enable a fast 2 way data exchange enabling customers policy details to be included on the client’s ‘single customer view’ CRM system.

A combination of short, focused daily development calls and regular senior stakeholder contact throughout the project (and post launch) ensured all parties were aware of progress and any questions or queries could be escalated or answered without delay.