Unisys, Microsoft en Marlborough Stirling hebben aangetoond dat moderne beheerplatforms meer dan 6,5 miljoen verzekeringspolissen kunnen beheren op één enkel platform. Tijdens tests in het Unisys Performance Center in Schiphol-Rijk draaide de Marlborough Stirling Lamda-beheeroplossing op Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition en Unisys ES7000 Servers. Tijdens de test, uitgevoerd in opdracht van verzekeraar AXA, verwerkte het platform de zwaarste maandelijkse belasting die de verzekeraar in de praktijk tegenkomt, maar dan op één database.
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SCALABILITY STUDY SHOWS MODERN ADMIN PLATFORMS CAN HOST MASSIVE 6.5 MILLION POLICY PORTFOLIOS
Schiphol-Rijk, 24 februari 2004 - A unique study by Marlborough Stirling, Microsoft and Unisys has demonstrated that a life and pensions portfolio of at least 6.5 million policies can be hosted on a single database. Marlborough Stirling believes that this is larger than any single-platform unit-linked portfolio currently existing in the UK financial services market and proves that modern, flexible administration platforms are capable of handling even the largest books of business now and in the future.
The test used Marlborough Stirling's Lamda solution, hosted on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition and Unisys ES7000 Servers and was performed by experts from all three companies at the Unisys Performance Centre in The Netherlands (Schiphol-Rijk).
Lamda supports the administration of life, pension and investment policies from new business through to claim or maturity. It aims to reduce the inefficiencies and risks of legacy mainframe systems and is proven as a solution capable of driving annual per policy cost reductions of up to 60%.
The test was carried out for AXA, a leading insurance and asset management house, who originally purchased Lamda in 2001. In particular, the study tested Lamda's processing capability at the highest peak of monthly activity. Particular effort was put into designing a very realistic mix of unit-linked personal and group pensions, bonds and protection policies in the portfolio.
The main results of the study were:
- The "worst day of the month" processing took just under 13 hours to complete, which is 7 hours less than the available daily processing window at AXA.
- Three million complex policy events were actioned in less than four hours, two million commission items were extracted in 36 minutes and 27 million account movements were extracted in 40 minutes.
- Whilst it was busy with its monthly peak load, Lamda responded to 100% of online requests from 2,000 concurrent users within normal expected limits, with over 97% of responses within two seconds.
- At no stage was the data server working at more than 53% of its total processing capacity.
David Power, Marlborough Stirling's director of life and pensions, said: "This is a ground-breaking demonstration. The results have been so positive that we are now keen to work with a customer planning to host at least 10 million policies on a single database. Lamda has also been instrumental in delivering a 60% reduction in the cost of administering the million policies it hosts for Sun Life Financial of Canada - so as well as being hugely scalable, Lamda delivers massive cost savings."
Andrew Voysey, director of financial services at Microsoft UK, commented: "Microsoft is committed to creating highly scalable, resilient and capable technology platforms. Marlborough Stirling and Unisys have provided solid proof that Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition is an attractive and powerful choice for hosting life and pensions administration systems like Lamda."
Steve Rawsthorn, vice president of marketing, systems & technology EMEA at Unisys, said: "The Unisys ES7000 Enterprise Windows Server is a world-beating technology that provides mainframe capabilities for Windows applications. These trials have demonstrated its fitness for even the largest Life companies in the UK."
Neil Bernard, senior technical architect at AXA, said:
"It was reassuring to see how well Lamda performed in this high volume test environment, using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition in conjunction with the Unisys ES7000 hardware. We were particularly impressed with the professionalism and commitment of everyone from MSG, Microsoft & Unisys to successfully delivering the scalability test."
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About Marlborough Stirling
Marlborough Stirling (www.marlborough-stirling.com) provides software and services to the mortgage, life, pension and investment market sectors. Its software and services enable financial service providers and intermediaries to meet consumers' demand for financial products that are flexible, capable of being distributed through a variety of channels and processed efficiently.
The group employs approximately 1,700 people and has offices in Cheltenham, Basingstoke, Brighton, Bristol, Cobham, Dudley, Hitchin, Dublin, Douglas in the Isle of Man, Cape Town, Madrid, Milan, Toronto and Vancouver.
Clients of the group include Alliance & Leicester, Bank of Scotland, CIBC, Co-operative Insurance Society, Coventry Building Society, Egg, Legal & General, Nationwide Building Society, NBS Bank, Royal London, Sanlam and Sun Life Financial of Canada (UK).
About AXA
AXA is a world leader in financial protection and wealth management, with major operations in Western Europe, North America and the Asia/Pacific area. AXA employs 130,000 staff and tied agents and, as of 30 June 2003, had EUR755 billion in assets under management. Reported total revenues for 2003 were approximately EUR72 billion. AXA ordinary shares are listed on the Paris Stock Exchange; AXA American Depositary Shares (ADSs) are listed on the NYSE under the ticker symbol AXA
About Microsoft in Financial Services
Microsoft is a leading provider of software products and technology to the financial services industry. Its customers operate in every area of retail banking, insurance and pensions, and the financial markets. Microsoft focuses on providing the security, scalability and reliability that the financial enterprise requires. Through Microsoft .NET, the XML Web services platform, Microsoft helps customers act on information any time, any place and from any smart device.
Working with leading software vendors and systems integrators in the banking and insurance industries, Microsoft supports financial institutions in re-engineering core business operations, achieving straight-through processing (STP), better managing all aspects of risk and capital adequacy, increasing efficiency in branch banking operations, and establishing a new generation of telephone and Internet-based financial services channels.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any device.
About Unisys
Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company. Our people combine expertise in systems integration, outsourcing, infrastructure, server technology and consulting with precision thinking and relentless execution to help clients, in more than 100 countries, quickly and efficiently achieve competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.unisys.com.
For more information:
Marielle Custers-Giezeman
External Communications Manager
Unisys Nederland N.V.
Tel: +31 (0)20 5267515
E-mail: marielle.custers@nl.unisys.com