25 February 2009: SSP has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract by Absa, one of the largest financial services companies in South Africa, to provide its core insurance IT platform across its entire general and life insurance business. The initial five year contract will generate SSP over $20m in licence fees, services, support and maintenance revenues.

Absa will become the first insurer to implement SSP’s new general insurance solution InsureJ, which will eventually replace four legacy systems and support over 1,000 employees and several million policies. SSP will be responsible for the entire solution delivery, which will see InsureJ supporting a variety of traditional and electronic distribution channels, including bancassurance, insurance brokers and the Internet. The solution will support a wide range of insurance products, including, home, motor, commercial lines, personal accident and life, with the first set of products going live in 16 months.

Following a thorough evaluation of the IT solutions available, including solutions from global IT consultancies and other software companies, Absa selected SSP’s InsureJ solution.  Designed to replace legacy technology, InsureJ is a component-based system which consists of several independent pure Java EE Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) components, which give insurers unprecedented freedom to integrate with other systems. These components include customer management, policy administration, claims management, reinsurance and product configuration, which can be implemented individually or as a complete solution. Supporting all lines of business through the full policy lifecycle, it can operate in all geographical locations, as it supports multi-language, double and single byte and multi-currency requirements.

David Rasche, SSP executive chairman said: “We are delighted to have been selected by Absa as their technology partner for this major contract. This is the largest contract in SSP’s history and one of the most significant international agreements in the global insurance marketplace in the last year.

Many insurance companies are spending millions of dollars a year just to keep their legacy solutions running. Legacy systems are not only a major source of costs, they are also a major constraint on businesses as they struggle to modify pricing quickly, launch new products or differentiate their service delivery. To realise cost savings and processing efficiencies insurers need to move to modern technology that can cater for all of their clients, across all of their lines of business. Most insurers have been slow to recognise this, however, Absa and like-minded companies will be able to transform their operating model and gain competitive advantage in their market.

Given the continued uncertainty across financial markets this shows the strength of the Absa business and is a huge endorsement of both the InsureJ solution and SSP. It’s possible that the global financial crisis will help focus the insurance industry’s attention on streamlining its systems.”

Willie Lategan, executive director at Absa said: “The speed of change in the insurance marketplace continues to increase as does the pressures on IT costs. By replacing four outdated and inefficient systems with one modern, flexible system we’re reducing costs as well as increasing productivity across the business – from sales right through to administration and customer service through the elimination of re-keying, due to straight through processing.

InsureJ will allow us to automate our business processes to ensure they are streamlined and efficient, to launch innovative products to market quickly and enable us to move into a wider range of distribution channels.

SSP offered the strongest proposition for us. The functionality and flexibility of the system were key considerations, but equally we needed the support of an experienced partner with a strong reputation for delivering solutions and with local presence. SSP specialises in insurance IT and has an inherent understanding of our business and worldwide insurance markets.”