Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by PrasBiswas

200

I am rearchitecting the Travel Insurance IS Systems of a rather large corporation (not small or medium) which has grown fast enough to outpace its homegrown system which now shows groans under the weight. The envisioned IS has many buckets of supplemental functionality like CRM, BI, Content Management, e-Commerce etc, however the core business will be managed by an "insurance engine". This engine will deal with the main business entities like policy, client, claims, quote, premiums, reinsurance, underwriting, compensation, financial magnagement etc.

I am assessing various technologies (platforms, components, engines) to determine the best fit. One of the alternative is to use one of the Microsoft Dynamics suites as the BPM heart or "insurance engine". This thread provides a good comparison of the 4 Dynamics choices, but there is nothing informative about the insurance business anywhere about a fit on the whole world wide web.

The main points about the Insurance industry is there is no physical product (no inventory, no warehousing, no logistics) but policies may have a lot of resellers (brokers, white label sites, B2B partners). There are also heavy data integrity links (and reporting) between the entities (policy, client, claims, quote, premiums, reinsurance, underwriting, etc). A good Business Rules repository is important.

Right now NAV and AX look like the frontrunners in my mind, but I am not sure if either one or any of the Dynamics choices fit the bill for an Insurance solution. Could NAV and AX be customized to service a solution like the one I described or should I discount these options altogether as an unnatural fit or a forced marriage? If so, what platform would be best suited for this situation?

Thanks in advance for your insights.

All responses (8)

Answers (0)

Ratnesh 26 on at

Like (0)

Report
RE: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

Insurance Firms and Brokers have a tough task in hand managing the insurance policies of hundreds of thousands of individuals, maintaining records of the premiums paid and ensuring that whenever a policy matures the cheque with the right amount is dispatched to the concerned individual. Some of the other tasks they have in hand are increasing sales, tracking commissions and integrating with external systems.

For this they need a robust scalable ERP which helps get all these jobs done and MS Dynamics Axapta happens to be that ERP Solution.

Microsoft Axapta ERP when implemented by a Microsoft Dynamics Partner empowers Insurance companies with everything they would need to ensure smooth day to day operations.

Some of the tasks MS Dynamics Axapta helps accomplish are:

Task Automation that reduces all the administrative burden that brokers and agents would otherwise endure.

Access to Process Insights so that business decisions can be taken more effectively and better results be aimed for.

Tracking and Managing Commissions with thorough clarity and precision.

Document Versioning, Storage and Management for Various Policies and Carriers.

Sharing of Core Financial Information such as HR, AR and Payroll.

Integration of disparate insurance, financials and ERP so that necessary information can be pulled out into one central location which helps the team have access to relevant data whenever the need arises.

Microsoft Axapta ERP is for companies operating in the enterprise segment and most insurance companies are huge organizations with hundreds of millions in annual revenue and tens of thousands of employees on board. That is why using this ERP Solution is a must if the entire operational framework has to be set in order.
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Re: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

Before going ahead with Dynamics alone as a BPM tool, I would consider adding a BPM suite which integrates with Dynamics. That way'll you'll get much richer process management capabilities. We've seen success using a BPM for a variety of industries, including insurance. Here's a page on a BPM suite which is tightly integrated with Dynamics and other Microsoft products:

www.pnmsoft.com/.../extending-crm
PrasBiswas 200 on at

Like (0)

Report
Re: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

In the 7 months since I wrote this, I have discovered a lot and writing this down for the benefit of another seeker who may find this useful. A Dynamics platform is not the recommended way for an insurance "core engine" but may be for other areas. Why?
Findings:
Insurance is very rules heavy, so a best of breed (meaning vertically aligned) system almost rules out a horizontally aligned, generalist system as you will spend a lot customizing it or onboarding the rules (like on Dynamics)
The industry term for a core engine is a "Policy Administration" system, and there are many out there - see this Gartner report
Many vendors have spent 6-20 years or more and around USD $10-25 million developing them. You will be able to license them for a 10th or less the price, so buy makes so much more sense than build (even over a platform like Dynamics)
A BRMS (Business Rules Management System) is a MUST HAVE as rules can be externalized for easy updates - no hardcoding
POLICY ADMINISTRATION functions
CLAIMS ADMINISTRATION functions

BILLING functions

Other things to consider:

Vertical alignment - based on Specialty and Personal Lines of Business – Property and Casualty OR Life?

Business Rules based - Metadata-driven and highly configurable

Rules and Tools based 0- all processes and workflows – internal and external - are highly automated and support straight through processing

Business workflows - common workflows like new business, endorsements, renewals, anniversary processing automated

Account management and Billing – visibility into and control of financial management

Readiness - how ready is the system to be deployed as opposed to a wishlist of 'coming soon' features

Deeper functionality with key policy lifecycle transactions and feature rich
Contact Management, Quotation features and Out of Sequence processing abilities
Ori Raivitz 25 on at

Like (0)

Report

Re: Re: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

Richard hi

Thank for the Information

We only do AX

Ori
Richard Whaley 25,195 on at

Like (0)

Report

Re: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

We have placed Dynamics GP as the accounting engine in several insurance companies quite successfully. Yes, an industry specific program ran the policy information and we imported receivables, payables, and GL information plus managed payroll from GP. The solid accounting functionality provided by GP is great.
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Re: Re: Re: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

Hi Ori

I checked with our customer reference people and we have > 50 formal Insurance customer reference accounts. Do you happen to know the SIC code of the specific area you are looking for? If so let me know and I can connect you directly with the corrent references.

Craig
Ori Raivitz 25 on at

Like (0)

Report
Re: Re: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

Craig

Do you know of any verticals for:

Insurance agency managment

Call Center

TPA- Third Party Administrator -
A third party administrator (TPA) is an organization that processes insurance claims or certain aspects of employee benefit plans for a separate entity.^[1] This can be viewed as "outsourcing" the administration of the claims processing, since the TPA is performing a task traditionally handled by the company providing the insurance or the company itself. Often, in the case of insurance claims, a TPA handles the claims processing for an employer that self-insures its employees. Thus, the employer is acting as an insurance company and underwrites the risk. The risk of loss remains with the employer, and not with the TPA. The employer may also contract with a reinsurer to pay amounts in excess of a certain threshold, in order to share the risk for potential catastrophic claims. An insurance company may also use a TPA to manage its claims processing, provider networks, utilization review, or membership functions. While some third-party administrators may operate as units of insurance companies, they are often independent. Best Regards,
Ori
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Re: Is Dynamics a fit for the Insurance industry?

Hi PrasBiswas

There are may insurance companies using both CRM and ERP solutions from the Microsoft Dynamics family today so yes either Microsoft Dynamics AX or NAV could be used in the manner you describe. The differentiating issue is likely to be one of scale. The Dynamics AX product will scale to support higher concurrent user numbers than NAV. Therefore if you are architecting a solution with a central instance rather than a distributed franchise type model than AX would be the better choice. If however you are doing a franchise or distributed model then NAV would likely be better as it has a higher degree of simplicity.

Craig