Company: Computer Sciences Corporation

Insurers Put New Products To The Test–Implementation

Company: Computer Sciences Corporation

Product: CyberLife

Web Site: www.csc.com

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) introduced a new version ofits CyberLife system for real-time administration of traditionaland nontraditional life insurance and annuity contracts. CyberLifehas an open architecture and Web capabilities, which can help lifeinsurers decrease time to market for their insurance products andlower their software costs.

The enhanced CyberLife system is the result of a two-yearstrategic technology program (STP), which entailed more than 100person-years from CSC and 13 leading U.S. life insurers thatsponsored the program. Among those sponsors was Jackson NationalLife. Mark Clark, vice president, systems and programming, atJackson, believes one of the important initiatives from theCyberLife project was to allow insurers to keep their onlinefunctions open while still doing traditional batch processingovernight. “There were several initiatives with the product,” saysClark. “One was called 24×7, which will allow us to processbusiness around the clock as opposed to having to shut down ouronline systems for a nightly cycle. The problem began when westarted offering customer service over the Web. People typicallywould sign on at night when you had your online system down. Youreally need to be able to keep those up 24 hours a day now. Thispiece allows you to do that.”

George Napoles, executive vice president of informationtechnology at Jackson, sees the new CyberLife release as atremendous improvement. “On the rare occasion when you might have aproblem with your batch cycle and you come up late on yourmonth-ends or year-ends, or where your batch cycle runs long and itmight impact your online window, all those problems go away becauseyou're up 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, regardless of when yourun your cycles,” he says.

Another part of the project was to introduce Web-based frontends to CyberLife to allow users to process for their clientsacross the Web and also to do in-house processing, Clark says.“Most of CyberLife's customers still use the old 3270 green-screentechnology,” he points out. “We have GUI technology. Today, youwant to do all your screens on the browser so you can work remotelyor allow your clients to do the transactions. By participating inthis design, we had input into how the screens looked, how thetransactions worked, and what transactions were supported. We madesure CSC understood what our requirements were.”

CyberLife provides straight-through processing for life andannuity products from the new-business and underwriting stagesthrough benefits illustration, claims processing, administration,billing and collection, correspondence, and reporting. The newversion complies with CSC e4, the company's enterprise integrationarchitecture. This helps financial services companies renovate coresystems, reducing the need for full-scale systems-replacementprojects, and employ new software components. The new CSCe4-compliant version of CyberLife is component based and uses openstandards, such as ACORD's XML interfaces and HTTP-based protocols.CyberLife's XML input and output capability and Web-basedarchitecture simplify the management of life insurance transactionsamong all major parties, both inside and outside the enterprise,according to CSC.

“Jackson National has a history of collaborating on CSC'sstrategic technology programs,” says Napoles. “By allowing all theinsurance companies to participate, we look at the systems from aslightly different perspective than CSC because we're actually outhere using the system. It ensures the platform and infrastructurecoincide with ours.”

Among the other CyberLife STP sponsors are AEGON USA Inc.,American United Life Insurance Company, Federated Life InsuranceCompany, Guardian Life In-surance Company of America, Kansas CityLife Insurance Company, Nationwide Life Insurance Company, New YorkLife In-surance Company, and United Farm Family Life InsuranceCompany.