New York Life International Uses Core Solution

Looking to leverage its technology assets as it expands into new markets, New York Life Insurance International Inc. (New York), the overseas arm of the New York Life Insurance Co. ($138.2 billion assets under management), will utilize a single core solution for all of the Asian and Latin American countries encompassed in its worldwide expansion project.

New York Life International has chosen Bangalore, India-based Infosys Technologies Ltd., an IT consulting and services provider, to design, develop and implement policy administration systems to support expansion of the company's business throughout Asia and Latin America.

Policy Administration

"A large part of this global platform is policy administration for our products around the world, but also we intend for it to support the agents, agency managers and the management of the companies," says Mervyn Wallis, chief information officer, New York Life International.

"Our intention is to have one solution with the power and flexibility to fit all countries. This solution will evolve over time to take in more locations and products as we move forward."

Value of the Investment

According to Mohan Sekhar, vice president of delivery systems, Infosys, "Going into this project we had to look at the balancing of objectives of each new market for New York Life International, while also trying to optimize cost by effectively leveraging the advantages of reuse and repeatability. With this in mind," continues Sekhar, "we have designed a core product which addresses most of New York Life International's global requirements, and also enables the roll-outs into individual markets with minimal customization, thereby reducing the time to market for the products significantly."

New York Life International chose Infosys because of the quality of its development staff and processes, according to Wallis. "Infosys has a significant number of developers and offers value," he says. "It is more the value than the absolute cheapness that we were looking for."

According to Wallis, New York Life International has already begun to see from the Infosys partnership. "From the very start of this project Infosys has applied the skills to get this project on track and keep it there," says Wallis. "They have quickly delivered the project management skills to deliver within set deadlines. As a result, New York Life International is looking forward to building a long relationship with Infosys."

Future Roll-Outs

Although there are no specific markets or locations identified at this time, Wallis notes, New York Life International will continue its expansion by rolling out to several new markets yearly. "Therefore it is not really a sequential sort of rollout," he says. "There are many countries being worked on at once and that is one of the reasons why we chose Infosys. Infosys has the ability to give us a variable set of resources to move with our needs."