Aviva Life Renews CSC Outsourcing Contract

On the strength of its vendor's maturity, stability and efficiency, North Quincy, Mass.-based Aviva Life Ins. Co. has renewed an outsourcing contract with CSC (Austin, Texas) for the administration of life and annuity products.

Lacking an internal IT development team, Aviva Life decided that outsourcing would continue to be an effective approach for policy administration, according to Kathy Veracka, assistant vice president, IT, Aviva Life. Despite an existing relationship with CSC lasting several years, Aviva Life considered a field of competing vendors. While those vendors were sometimes competitive on cost, Veracka says, "they hadn't been in the business as long and didn't have the breadth of resources that CSC could offer us."

Veracka sees longer term value in CSC's continuing to add more outsourcing clients to an already significant base. "That leads to greater stability and will also likely lead to efficiency improvements," she says.

Increasing effectiveness was also a factor in CSC's favor, according to Veracka. "There's been some real improvement in the way our teams work together," she says. Veracka adds that, "CSC knows Aviva's business model and understands what our requirements are almost before we have to ask for them."

The bottom line cost remained a top criterion, but in that respect CSC also generally had an edge, Veracka claims. "We've seen greater efficiency in process-in requirements, coding and testing -- which meant a little bit less of a resource need," she relates. "Also, CSC was able to offer a bit of a reduction, due, in part I believe, because of its expanding customer base."

From a strategic point of view, the existing relationship was also hard to beat, according to Veracka. "Getting product to market quickly is very important to us, and over the last couple of years we've worked specifically to have a very tight implementation model," she explains. "This arrangement is very effective for us because it allows CSC to focus on operational efficiencies so that we can focus on our strategic blueprint for where we're going over the next few years."

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