12/10/2018 Experts Help MetLife Develop Web-Based Benefits Platform - Strategy - India

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India: Experts Help MetLife Develop Web-Based Benefits

Platform
Last Updated: 27 January 2005
Article by Mishra MISHRA Kailash
National Insurance Academy

MetLife's Institutional line of business asked experts to work with the eBusiness application development team to help it
establish and build an integrated service portal. The new portal would provide a single point of access to all products and allow
individuals to perform online self-service such as enrollment, benefit inquiry and other transactions using electronic signatures.
Based on experts' industry-specific knowledge and technology experience, MetLife asked the experts team to concentrate on
the development and implementation of an Internet-enabled enrollment and service system. Expert team worked with MetLife
Institutional Business leadership to:

Analyze current enrollment processes

Identify opportunities for leveraging technology across the various product lines

Develop business requirements

Participate in the technical design and development

Present a proof of concept using Web services that allows for integration with MetLife's multiple back-end systems

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Implement an initial online Internet enrollment application

Deliver the contextual application framework

Share knowledge with MetLife employees

Improving the Customer Experience

With the new integrated portal and the online enrollment system in place, MetLife is now able to provide group customers with
a single destination for product information, enrollment, and other transaction processing. Completed on time and within
budget, the successful project implementation helped MetLife Institutional Business:

Improve the customer experience

Reduce processing costs

Enhance service capabilities for plan sponsors

Increase operating earnings

Implement cutting-edge technology

Enrich and energize MetLife employees

"MetLife's employee benefit portal allows employees to make the most of their benefits by providing access to
personalized information, empowering employees to make benefit-related decisions and manage their benefits
themselves through self-service. This benefit portal provides a multi-product solution that's easy for employees to
use. This new technology, delivered with experts, supports MetLife's leadership position in the Institutional Benefits
marketplace."

Cohort Study

The insurance industry is undergoing rapid change. Globalization and consolidation mean that organizations need greater
versatility. Companies are increasingly focused on managing and cross-selling financial services products, accelerating
revenue growth, developing new products and exploring the integration of multiple distribution channels. At the same time,

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companies need to lower operating costs and more effectively define and realize the benefits of strategic information
technology investments. How do companies create successful outcomes for these challenges, keep the organizations running
at optimal levels and stay ahead of growth demands? Experienced insurance executives understand that, in order to maintain
their competitive edge, organizations must meet these demands by making the best information technology decisions. Industry
experienced professionals can help companies implement best-in-class systems with reduced risk and realize efficiency
improvements, take out costs and increase employee productivity - all in record time. Such industry professionals should
average several years of experience, possess unmatched technology know-how, and are organized around specific business
areas to offer end-to-end results in:

Personal lines

Commercial lines, reinsurance and large brokers

Individual life, annuities, long-term care and disability

Group benefits

Performance Improvement and Cost Takeout

Commitment to operational efficiency and fiscal responsibility means that many insurance companies, particularly those heavily
invested in information technology, are focusing on profitability with a renewed interest in achieving and measuring real returns
on their information technology investments. The heart of information technology performance is linking technology and
business impact. With well-established Performance Improvement and Cost Takeout solution, experienced insurers help
organizations focus on rapidly reducing costs while improving their business performance. They use a proven approach that
systematically monitors information technology expenditures using defined and relevant metrics while critically examining what
is being done to enhance the business.

Go-To-Architecture and Legacy System Migration

Speed-to-market is critical for competing effectively in today's changing market. It's time to move the insurance back office to a
straight-through-processing, once-and-done environment and enable company's front office with the tools and information that
build revenue. Extending the legacy platform's Web services architecture can help companies business grow. Insurance
experienced team can help a company quickly integrate its applications to a common environment that becomes a business
enabler. The resulting application portfolio can allow company to improve its expense ratio, realize a return on investment

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sooner than expected, reduce time-to-market, eliminate redundant processes and streamline the entire systems development
process.

Experience insurance executive teams leverage technology solution to significantly reduce the cost of servicing and processing
customer and producer requests. In addition, they can help company:

Integrate existing legacy applications

Service multiple distribution channels and customer support functions

Consolidate client information from multiple sources

Exploit the latest open architecture designs

Achieve rapid time-to-value

Processes, workload, staffing levels, systems and assumptions can be quickly changed by experienced insurance executives
to evaluate expected operational impacts. Such experienced executives apply business simulation capabilities directly to the
insurance industry due to their extensive knowledge in the following functions:

Claims

Customer relationship management

Customer service and back-office operations

Call centers

Client information management

For example, insurance companies and technology integrators can redesign claims processes to reduce claims expenses and
payouts and boost customer service levels. Such experienced teams use simulation models to enable claims organizations to:

Provide a financial baseline for current claims processing

Link Claims functionality and company's existing system functionality to specific tasks
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Simulate current and future claims environments

Identify loss-adjustment expense reductions

Identify information technology return on investment opportunities

Decision Support

Such experienced decision support team can help company develop a full financial data warehouse and integrated analytical
environment. Such approach focuses on building a scalable warehouse that addresses business requirements and the
decision-making process. They blend functional and technical expertise to produce a robust application with relevant
information that allows them to achieve short term success and build the momentum required to extend and enhance the
warehouse on an ongoing basis.

Treasury, Cash Management and Investments

Insurance company executives are under pressure to increase income and reduce costs. Cash-management optimization is
more important than ever. Such experienced executive teams use proven methods to benchmark key cash management
practices within an insurance company. This can enable the company to add value to its bottom line by uncovering and
implementing opportunities with hard-cash benefits and highly attractive returns on investment. Such experienced team can
help the company modernize its investments, as well as its treasury and corporate risk management structures to:

Increase investment returns and cash interest income

Improve risk/return equation management

Enhance treasury and investment functions to support strategic initiatives

Such teams are made up of highly experienced professionals who have worked with some of the leading insurers and
reinsurers.

Security

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Many insurance companies are evaluating efforts to protect their technology, business processes, client information and
workforce. It is imperative that insurers' disaster recovery or business continuity plans address these critical areas in order to
prepare such organizations for a catastrophic event. The experienced executives take a holistic approach to protecting
company's intellectual capital and the systems that maintain it. Such team will guide the company from strategy, planning and
design through implementation and operations, and they will provide the company with a comprehensive view of current
security practices along with a best-practice recommendation report. They can also identify ways to achieve potential cost
reductions, increase client information accuracy and enhance customer satisfaction through improved security programs.

Privacy

Leading companies know they need to address privacy in a strategic, organizational and customer-oriented framework rather
than solely as a compliance issue. Proactive companies will allow customers to choose their privacy preferences and honor
those preferences accurately and efficiently, thus instilling consumer trust. Such experienced executives help clients use
customer privacy to create competitive advantage while protecting data assets through privacy services that address people,
policies and procedures, and technology. In addition, experienced services strategically address the privacy issue, consistently
honor security preferences, maintain customer trust and loyalty, and assist the organization in its ability to capture the full
business benefit of information sharing. The approach of experienced executives is to make privacy work for company's
business rather than allowing it to constrain the business.

"Experienced executives bring three specific things to the table: first, a proven track record of delivery; second,
industry-specific knowledge, both in terms of traditional competitors and emerging technology-enabled competitors;
and finally, they not only deliver the point solution to the specific business problem that companies are looking to
address, but also architectural and knowledge frameworks that they can re-use and re-deploy over and over again
through succeeding efforts within the company."

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about
your specific circumstances.

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Contributor
Mishra MISHRA Kailash
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National Insurance Academy
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Authors
Mishra MISHRA
Kailash

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