NTUC Income

MODERNIZATION OF NTUC INCOME

Income is…

Singapore’s largest insurers, has over 1.8 million policy holders with total assets of S$21.3 billion.

Employs 3400 insurance advisor and 1200 office staff –majority located across and 8 branch network.

In June 2003, Income succeeded in the migration of its legacy insurance system to a digital web based system.

Old business Process

Branches

• Meeting agent

• Filing in forms – submitted them at branches

• Sending them to the offices services dept by courier

Office Serv. Dept

• Logging documents

• Sorting document

• Sending them to underwriting Dept

Underwritting Dept

• Acceptance proposals (underwriting)

• Sending them to computer services Dept for printing

Computer service Dept

• Printing

• Redistributed

Warehouse

• Documents were packed and sent to the warehouse

• Storage

2-3 days delay 2-3 days delay

Problem with paper based system

Too much process Many documentation (hard to search, need

large storage Took long time to finish a certain request for

insurance

Income’s Information System

HP3000 and COBOL

HP3000 and COBOLHP 3000 COBOL

Made by Hewlett Packard – Develop in 1973

Common Business Oriented Language – Develop in the early 1980s

mainframe that hosted the core insurance application - accounting and MIS.

maintained by Income’s in house IT team - developing new product in COBOL

Weakness of HP3000 and COBOL Frequently breakdown – work had to be stopped while data

was restored.

Back up system could only restore the data to the version from previous day

Much time and costs for restoring system - would risk losing important data

Hardware crashed – took several months to recover the loss data.

Experienced of a total 3 major hardware failures, resulting in a total of 6 days of complete downtime.

Too long launch time for new products

Not real time information – loss opportunity for cross products sales

eBao LifeSystem (eBao)

What is eBao

The Java based software Develop by EBaoTech in 2003 Comprising 3 sub-system

Policy Administration

Sales management

Supplementary Resources

Fulfill of the many company requirement From customer oriented design to barcode

technology capabilities Ability to support in business process

Features of eBao• Access the system in

real time• Anytime/• anyware

• Cut time needed to design and launch new products

•Saving time and cost•Improved response •Customer satisfaction

• Single platform (a singular view) supports all distribution

Streamlined sales

services

Faster time to market

Improved closure

rate

Manageability

Q1: What were the problems faced by Income in this case? How were the problems solved by the new digital system

PROBLEMS HOW TO SOLVE

Tedious & paper based system

In 2013, Income has switched to java based eBao LifeSystem

Too much time & cost

Frequently broke down

Space for warehouse (store documents)

Q2: What type of information systems and business processes were used by Income before migrating to the fully digital system?

Incomes used HP3000 as mainframe and COBOL program in early 1980s.

Incomes has implemented manually all the works in their business process.

Based on that, too many process involved and it took a long time to launch a new products.

Q3: Describe the information systems and IT infrastructure at Income after migrating to the fully digital system?

eBao Comprising 3 sub-system

Policy Administration

Sales management

Supplementary Resources

Customer oriented design to barcode customer oriented design to barcode technology capabilities and ability to support in business process.

All application resided on 2 or more servers, each connected by 2 or more communication lines, all of which were “load balanced”.

The robust minimized downtime occurrence due to hardware or operating systems failures.

Replace IT infrastructure Equipped with scanner Monitor were change to 20 inches PC RAM Size was upgraded to 128 MB New hardware and software for application server Web servers Disk storage system were installed LAN cables replaced with faster cables, a fiber-optic

and wireless capability

Q4: What benefit did Income reap from the new system?

Saving lots of times for restoration of previous data

Moving to a paperless environment

Faster accessing the system at anytime and anywhere

Allowed Incomes to view summary of each customer over different product and different areas.

Cross selling become easier and customers services could be improved.

Simplified work flows –cut policy processing time and cost

Reduce time to design and launched new products

Allowed online sup-port of customers, agents and brokers.

Q5: How well is Income prepared for the future? Are the problems described in the case likely to be repeated?

How well Income Prepared in the future

Income seems to be well prepared for the future

Income has extensive system flexibility and launch new products directly via eBao system in just a few days

May enable income to be more competitive in the future

This case like repeated?

If Income constantly improves it system and adopt new technology to keep up rapidly changing business environment, the problem never come up again.

Group 7

Samihah Ahmed

Aliaa Mohd Ziyadi

Nittaraj A/L Perumal