India holding about 17 % of the universe ‘s population is a mostly untapped market. About 80 % of the Indian population being without a life, wellness and non – life insurance, more and more insurance companies are now emerging in the Indian insurance sector. With the opening up of the economic system, several international leaders in the insurance sector are seeking to venture into the India insurance industry.
The growing in the insurance industry straight impacts the reinsurance industry. Reinsurance suppliers are fundamentally companies that provide insurance screen to insurance companies so as to cover their hazard. With the growing in the sum of insurance merchandises sold by the insurance companies their hazard constituent goes on increasing. So as to cover this hazard, companies resort to reinsurance. Thus the reinsurance market is all turning at a rapid gait.
The growing of the Reinsurance industry in India is coupled with a figure of challenges. Challenges faced by the reinsurance industry include shriveling borders, increasing competition etc. In order to run into the challenges, reinsurance companies across the Earth have begun leveraging to a great extent on their information and communicating engineerings.
Reinsurance houses are utilizing enterprise direction solutions to increase productiveness, salvage on disbursals, to obtain higher client satisfaction, thereby ensuing into client keeping and to better gross revenues public presentation.
General Insurance Corporation of India ( GIC Re ) is the exclusive reinsurance company in the domestic reinsurance market in India with more than three decennaries of experience in the Re-Insurance concern. GIC is headquartered in Mumbai.
In India, GIC provide reinsurance to the direct insurance company as it is the exclusive reinsurer in the market of domestic reinsurance. It is one of the leaders in the facultative arrangements and domestic companies ‘ pact programmes.
Aims for Enterprise Resource Planning System:
The cardinal aims for originating ERP execution were as follows:
So as to retain leading place in the national ( Indian ) reinsurance market.
The purpose of emerging as the leader of reinsurance in the Afro – Asiatic markets.
To obtain an incorporate position of all concern minutess.
Major Business Challenges faced by GIC Re:
Customer-Centricity
The alteration in focal point of the organisation to being customer-centricity created a figure of issues for the company.
It became of import to hold optimum cognition of all the client sections.
Customized merchandises and services were required to designed to run into the demands of each of the identified client sections.
It became of import to follow cross merchandising of merchandises and services as an of import growing scheme.
It besides became of import to supply any clip and any topographic point reachability to the clients.
Competition
The turning figure of participants in the market created an environment of intense competition
In order to prolong such degrees of competition it became imperative for the company to follow new schemes and place agencies of procuring a competitory advantage over its rivals.
Globalization
Expansion of company operations across multiple geographical locations besides made it necessary for GIC Re to place agencies of effectual monitoring and control.
Expansion besides increased the degree of competition by adding new rivals from the new geographical locations.
Merchandise Commoditization
The addition in competition was impacting the company ‘s net income borders.
It became perfectly necessary for the company to separate its trade name from rivals.
Lower client trueness and increasing monetary value sensitiveness were besides step menaces to GIC Re.
Consolidation
It was of import to convey about a consolidation across the organisation so as to present a clear value to its clients.
Conformity
Expansion of operations across multiple geographical locations made its imperative to follow with multi-national ordinances.
Major IT Challenges faced by GIC Re:
Data Quality
Datas maintained by the organisation was fragmented by the line of concern, the subdivisions, the different geographical locations etc.
It was of import to consolidate this information and supply high quality of merchandise and operations related informations.
Procedure Integration
It was of import to standardise and streamline cross functional procedures and develop and integrated work flow.
The company was enduring from value escape due to non integrating of systems.
Bequest IT Systems
The bequest system used by the company did non reflect the alteration in focal point from being a contract centric to client centric insurance supplier.
Decrease of Operation Complexity
The company used a figure of applications to pull off the day-to-day activities.
As a consequence, a figure of interfaces had to be monitored and managed which proved to be really hard.
It therefore became of import to cut down the figure of interfaces and convey about standardisation across the interfaces.
Expectations from ERP:
Decrease in overall cost through improved efficiency and increased productiveness
Drive concern invention
To a give a competitory advantage to the company over its rivals
Driver for concern growing
Improve overall client experience and satisfaction
Ensure regulative conformity
Support planetary operations
Create new gross watercourses for the company
Ensure growing of bing gross watercourses
Choice of SAP:
The major factors lending to the pick of SAP are as follows:
Integrated Enterprise platform for transacting GIC ‘s concern
The company required a platform that would incorporate all the procedures and processs across the endeavor.
The system was required to standardise all procedures and streamline set of procedures across the organisation instead than streamlining big figure of processs.
The company expected the have an endeavor broad visibleness of concern operations.
SAP Reinsurance solution being used by Global Industry leaders – Munich Re and Hannover Re
One of the major lending factors to taking SAP was the company ‘s biggest rival and the planetary industry leader Munich Re and Hannover Re had implement SAP Reinsurance system.
Adoption of the planetary best patterns
By 2005, SAP Insurance had about all insurance service suppliers running it.
SAP had in the yesteryear implemented both the insurance and reinsurance bundles for multiple clients.
This enabled SAP to derive an apprehension of the planetary best patterns in the prevalent in the industry.
GIC Re hoped to harvest the benefits of this cognition in their ain implement of SAP Reinsurance.
Most companies who had antecedently implemented ERP had strong positive experience with SAP for their insurance portfolio
ERP Implementation Start Date:
ERP Go Live Date: February 2006
SAP Version: SAP R/3 Version 4.7
Geographic Scope: Offices in India, London and Dubai
SAP Modules Implemented:
SAP FS-RI – Reinsurance
SAP FS-CD – Collections / Expenses
SAP IM-IC ( CFM ) – Investing Management
SAP FI-CO – Finance
SAP HR – Human Resources
SAP BIW – Business Intelligence
Execution Challenges:
First SAP Reinsurance ( FS-RI ) execution outside Europe.
First SAP FS-CD Implementation in India.
First SAP IM-IC execution in India in a Insurance/Reinsurance environment.
One of the few Active Reinsurers in the universe utilizing SAP FS-RI
Legacy informations Migration
Customisation of Reinsurance Module ( FS-RI )
Hazard Manager in FS-RI ( Facultative Business ) had non yet been implemented even in Europe
Implementation Highlights:
Opportunity to critically re-look the company ‘s concern procedures and patterns and incorporate alterations wheresoever required.
Elimination of informations incompatibility by rectifying, formalizing and cleansing bequest informations.
Opportunity to streamline the administration by following the planetary best patterns in the industry
Business Benefits:
Tight integrating between underwriting and proficient Accounting procedures thereby supplying better concern focal point.
Integrated procedures extinguishing about all redundancies and inter-departmental rapprochements.
Increased mechanization reduced manual intercession and improved informations quality.
Improved reserving procedure ( tracking the development of outstanding loss militias ) .
Financial & A ; Strategic Benefits:
Sap allowed visibleness of all assets
Standardized rating of all assets were achieved
Daily updates to the investing portfolio enable the company to accomplish integrated investing direction
Effective existent clip hazard analysis
Entire Cost of Ownership:
95 % of the company ‘s demands were met by th standard solution offered by SAP and minimum customization was required
Operational Benefits:
The operation benefits as evaluated by the company after two old ages of execution are as follows:
Cardinal PERFORMANCE INDICATORS ( KPI )
Impact
Time to mensurate public presentation
-70 %
Time to be after for new undertakings and activities
-30 %
Time to public presentation market hazard analysis
-80 %
Attempts to map beginnings of hazard
-80 %
Reporting Flexibility
+90 %
Quality of Reports
+80 %
Quality of Portfolio rating
+90 %
Quality of dealing function
+90 %
Future Plans:
Up step from SAP R/3 Version 4.7 to SAP ECC 6.0 platform
Connecting offices in Moscow, Malaysia and South Africa to the upgraded ERP web
