The Standard General Insurance Company (Stangen), a subsidiary of African Bank Investments, went live with the first phase of an implementation project on the Exergy insurance administration software platform from SilverBridge.
SilverBridge is listed on the JSE's Alt-X.
Stangen offers a portfolio of credit life insurance and funeral insurance products to its customers through retail channels such as Ellerines, also wholly owned by African Bank Investments. The insurer, which has been a SilverBridge customer for more than eight years, is rolling out the Exergy software to improve the performance and flexibility of its core insurance administration environment.
In the first phase of the project, Stangen migrated more than six million credit life policies onto the Exergy platform. Stangen moved onto the Exergy software from a legacy product called SDT Life.
Already, the project sees operational efficiency improvements at Stangen of hundreds of percentage points. In one instance, a premium run process on more than three million policies that used to take Stangen a little over a week to complete, including the data prep, now gets done within a morning.
Exergy is a modular, rules-based administration solution that is built on an integrated, unified framework. In a future phase, Stangen plans to utilise Exergy to increase the scope of its offerings. SilverBridge will also write interfaces between the Exergy system and the African Bank data warehouse.
Says Muller Strauss, chief financial officer at African Bank: “The rapid pace of change in our industry and the growth of our businesses demanded that we move from our old platform onto a more modern solution. With the Exergy software in place, we will have the agility and capacity to support the growth of our business well into the future.”
Strauss says that the ease with which Exergy can be configured and customised will enable Stangen to react quickly to changes in the competitive and regulatory landscape. Exergy's scalability will support Stangen's business as it grows.
“We are happy to continue our relationship with SilverBridge, which has evolved its products alongside the needs of the industry and has always shown a great understanding of our business,” he adds.
Johan Reyneke, SilverBridge operational executive, says many insurance firms such as Stangen are revamping their legacy systems to cater for a changing regulatory environment and new competitive pressures. Many of them are opting for Exergy and SilverBridge because of the expertise and track record. Big system implementation projects should always be seen as collaboration between the client and the provider. “We are fortunate that Stangen knows how to engage with us in a constructive way. This is why we were able to help them bring such high levels of efficiency into their business.”
Lee Kuyper
SilverBridge
(012) 360 0100
Lee.Kuyper@silverbridge.co.za
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