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xxx Need example companies
xxx Need On-line & Internet Insurance
xxx Need Knowledge / Rule Based Systems
Falling telecommunication costs have allowed global operations centres to be establish. The English speaking Bahamas is a favourite, but even they are being undercut by Jamacia, and they in turn are concerned about losing business to places like India. British Airways is now running some administration from Colombo in Sri Lanka. Managing Change is aware that a number of UK insurers are investigating using a similar operation in India. By having multiple operating sites, companies can switch customer calls from one centre to another so as to "follow the sun".
Most banks and building societies have well developed on-line systems for their customer money transaction services. Some are updated in real-time, others after a few hours and others overnight. Many of these systems have been developed in-house over many years, perhaps a decade or more. These systems often mean that customer information can be highly fragmented, duplicated and out-of-date in the various legacy systems. High maintenance costs, inflexibility and a move to a customer orientation has led many insurance companies to purchase packages such as Continuum, CAPSIL and POLISY.
All
the major banking and building societies have ATMs offering money transaction
services. Many are known to be researching, piloting or using multi-functional
terminals some of which contain video links to administrative centres.
Nationwide Building Society, with
its Interact system, is very advanced in these areas. Consumers can learn
about the different savings plans, about the process of buying a house, identify
thier maximum mortgage advance (see mock-up on the right - click to
enlarge), and even do what-ifs and comparisons on the different kinds
of repayment plans. Nationwide also runs a number of self-service branches
complete with large video screens that can display a picture of a security
guard!
One answer to the problems of fragmented transaction systems has been to
create a central customer database. Typically this holds details on the accounts,
products and services which a customer holds along with social economic profiling
data. The database is then used for marketing analysis and for targeting
new products and services to the customer. These are large databases which
have been implemented using database engines such as Teradata. The process
of gaining intelligent information from raw data is known as
Data
Mining
and will use software such as provided by
SPSS. Data Mining is being enhanced with
the use of Data
Visualisation which uses 3D graphics to highlight
and explore data clusters.
Relationship Marketing goes one step further in recording customer interactions, preferences and aspirations. These systems need to provide access to all customer facing staff both to input data, to provide prompts when the customer is next in contact with the organisation, and to instigate timely and relevant pro-active customer contact. These systems are sometimes called Predictive systems.
xxxxTechnology details are not to hand but one can surmise that for established players front end systems have been built to access legacy systems. Additionally, these telephone banking systems need to provide scripts and product information for the multi-functional call handlers as well as work performance data. Often they are integrated with the telephony systems allowing pre retrieval of customer data and voice & data switching. Some provide automated services using touch tone phones. In the case of out-bound tele-marketing pre-emptive dialling is employed.
Because of secuity concerns most systems are direct dial-in to the bank's own computer systems using PCs as clients. An example is the Nationwide Building Society. TSB Bank's recently launched service is provided via CompuServe which again offers a more secure environment. More recent systems are based on Internet technology even though they may continue to be dial-in.
In the US a number of banks, like Atlanta Internet Bank and CompuBank, do offer Internet banking though not all Internet banks are profitable at the moment. Security First Networked Bank declared net losses of $5.8 million for the first three quarters of 1997 but announced that its software subsidiary Security First Technologies, made revenues of $2.9 million for the third quarter, and $7.4 million in the first three quarters of 19971.
Nearer to home, Banco Santander in Spain has an Internet banking service, Banca SuperNet, that allows customers to personalised the service, for example, sending an alert by phone or via email when their balance falls below a set threshold. The system uses BroadVision's One-To-One software.
xxxx
OT enables mass customisation both in terms of products and services. R. Pawson (1995) uses the term Expressive Systems to describe flexible IT systems that can be tailored to individual customers. Such systems require a layer of abstraction, a component approach and an extensible infrastructure.
It is reported that such systems are in use by Bradford and Bingley and NatWest Bank.
Zurich has introduced the OT concept of resuse without using OT technology. Quotations now take 40 minutes compared to 2.5 hours previously. Another user of OT is Allied Dunbar.
xxx Question 12 to what extent is OT being used elsewhere within FS and what benefits have been gained.
xxxx
Eagle Star has converted all its legacy systems to a single in-house developed system using DB2. Clerks have PC with MS Word & Excel for producing personalised responses. They can also personalise the product offering by adding various options. New products or features are now brought to market in 10-15 days or less compared to the previous months. Applications are written in COBOL.
CorbaFin is developing a Financial Systems Architecture with Insurance functions high on the agenda. Mainly led by US companies like Continuum, UK companies involved included Barclays Bank, NatWest, Pearl Assurance, Save & Prosper, Cambridge Business Solutions, CityMax, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank., Tate Bramald, and the University of Sheffield.
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