Russia’s RGS Implements FIS’ ALIS Policy Admin System

Former state insurer Rosgosstrakh seeks to leverage rapid product development, distribution and service capabilities to gain largest market share in a newly competitive market.

Seeking to maximize its opportunities in a rapidly expanding Russian life insurance market, the country's largest insurer Rosgosstrakh (RGS, Moscow; over $2 billion in 2007 premium) has implemented FIS' (Cardiff, Wales) ALIS policy administration system to cover the carrier's portfolio of life, health and personal accident insurance, as well as investments and pensions for both individual and group business. ALIS went into production at RGS in July 2008 and is now live in all of the carrier's 65 regional sales offices across Russia.

Among the benefits that drove RGS's decision to enter a multiyear, multi-million dollar contract with FIS was the ALIS solution's capacity for rapid launch of insurance products, according to the vendor.

"The primary advantage of ALIS to Rosgosstrakh is its flexible Product Management module allowing Rosgosstrakh to respond promptly to changes in market needs and configure products at its own discretion," according to an FIS statement. "For salespeople the system offers a user-friendly web-interface enabling agents to calculate quotes and enter policy applications around the country and the world via the internet."

ALIS provides full support for all policy processing, including automatic and manual underwriting and automatic allocation of payments, according to FIS. It enables claim, survival benefit processing and automatic accrual and maintenance of agent commission. ALIS maintains accounting in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards.

ALIS capabilities will play an important role in RGS's pursuit of customers in Russia's burgeoning life insurance market, according to Graham Newman, global marketing director, FIS. Once Russia's state-owned monopoly insurance company, now RGS not only competes against other Russian insurers and increasingly will have to face off against major international players.

"There are many distribution challenges associated with the huge geography," says Newman. "They have the infrastructure in place to cover that geography and they believe they can capitalize on it."

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