Allfinanz and IBM partner for delivery to Small-to-Medium sized Insurers
January 2004Allfinanz, an Irish company supplying business process automation software to the insurance industry, has joined IBM's ISV Advantage Initiative, a program designed to provide independent software vendors (ISVs) with technical and marketing support to help meet the specific information technology (IT) needs of small and medium business (SMB) companies. Customers are seeking solutions that help them better integrate processes and applications internally and externally and allow them to quickly respond to changing market opportunities on demand.
Allfinanz is a 17 year old industry veteran and the leading provider of new business processing & underwriting automation software to Life Insurers, who are seeking to eradicate the traditional inefficiencies of processing new business, and in so doing slashing costs and driving greater profitability. The key business problem facing insurers is the costly and inefficient process of getting new protection business on books - the biggest bottleneck lying with the underwriting process. And as business volumes are growing substantially, insurers are finding they are unable to cope with their current (manual) underwriting processes. Automation of the underwriting new business process is now a strategic imperative for the industry worldwide and is being enabled via IT-led solutions such as xpertBridge. The solution comprises two products - xpertBridge Front Office and xpertBridge Underwriter Workbench.
Enabling Allfinanz xpertBridge on IBM's technology platform comprising IBM eServer, xSeries and pSeries, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere MQ Workflow, and DB2 will help Allfinanz expand into the SMB market faster and more effectively than is possible with proprietary platforms.
"Joining the IBM ISV Advantage program we believe will result in us winning more customers in the SMB market segment, to build on our joint successes in the large corporate market," says David Wall, Allfinanz' CEO.
The IBM WebSphere and DB2 families include products that are designed and priced specifically for small and medium businesses -- easy to install and manage, scalable to grow with a business, rich in functionality, and based on open standards to allow integration with existing software and hardware platforms.
Allfinanz will also work closely with IBM to expand its visibility in target vertical industries through various co-marketing and sales activities.
"Medium sized businesses are seeking open and dependable solutions that are cost effective and easy to maintain," said Buell Duncan, general manager, ISV & Developer Relations, IBM. "We are pleased that Allfinanz has joined ISV Advantage and recognize the value of working together to best meet our joint customer needs in the Life Insurance industry."
PartnerWorld administers ISV Advantage for Developers, the developer resource for IBM Business Partners. It is a worldwide program designed to help software developers reach broader markets, lower their costs of doing business, and take their products to market faster.
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