Irish Life Chooses Siebel

Bancassurance has been very successful in Ireland and Irish Life wanted part of the action," says Aine Cassidy, senior manager of bancassurance at Irish Life (Dundalk), about why the insurance company has chosen to implement San Mateo, CA-based Siebel Systems' eInsurance applications.

Irish Life also wanted an application that could help consolidate customer information from two of the company's most recent acquisitions, the residential mortgage provider Irish Permanent in 1999 and this year's purchase of TSB Bank. Siebel's eBusiness Application suite will be deployed throughout Irish Life's life and pensions sales force, contract center and bank branches.

However, Irish Life also wanted to automate its point-of-sale system, but didn't want to have to integrate a new POS application with eInsurance, reflects Cassidy. "Siebel is not a point-of-sale system," she says. "I previously worked for AIB Allied Irish Bank and had problems integrating a POS product" with a CRM application. "I did not want to go through that again."

Irish Life ultimately chose Siebel's product because it integrates easily with a POS system from Aspective (London), a Siebel Premier Alliance Partner, Cassidy says.

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio