CSC Earns Contracts

Capitalizing on the trends of efficiency-driven and component-based solutions, CSC Financial Services Group's (Austin, TX) new Property and Casualty Solutions practice announced licensing contracts with four US P&C carriers.

The companies signing agreements to license CSC software products for billing, rating and other core insurance applications were Kemper Insurance Companies (Long Grove, IL), Georgia Farm Bureau Mutual (GFB, Macon, GA), Southern States Insurance Exchange (Richmond, VA), plus a fourth firm ranking in the top-10 US insurers that declined to be named.

A unifying theme across all the contracts was the customers' requirement for greater efficiency, according to Ray August, president of the new Property and Casualty Solutions unit, launched in June.

"Companies are looking to improve the efficiency with which they do business and for ways they can increase their revenue line," August says. "There's a lot of demand here."

August also reports growing demand for component-based systems that work on a plug-and-play basis with existing systems. CSC has crafted its offerings to answer this appetite through its development efforts in XML and partnerships with organizations such as ACORD and vendors such as Docucorp (Dallas) and Computer Associates (Islandia, NY).

The vendor's technology approach played a role in GFB's decision to license the billing and collection and client components of CSC's S3+ solution, according to Randell Lack, the carrier's director of IS.

Seeking Flexibility

"We needed greater flexibility with our billing options. In terms of the future, we were looking to being able to do online payments and bill presentment," Lack says. "We felt what CSC was doing with browser-based technology and moving billing in that direction was where we wanted to go. And we felt CSC was further along with that development than the other people we looked at, and could get there faster."

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio