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LEVERAGING
on its domain knowledge and expertise in offering insurance consultancy
and development service, KALS Information System has brought out
a software product named Virtual Insure. Virtual Insure aims to
assist insurance companies in offering better products and services
to customers using the ubiquitous Internet as a medium.
Born
out of a 250 man month development effort, this insurance application
comes in two flavours - Virtual Insure front office and Virtual
Insure comprehensive. K Srinivasan, managing director of KALS Information
Systems, says that the success of life insurance companies depends
on their ability to offer innovative products and service to retain
and get new customers.
Insurance
companies can use the front office application as an effective tool
to service customers coming through the web, e-mail and telephone.
A
host of other things that it allows insurance firms to do is offer
product illustration, provide online quotes and proposal generation,
generate product query by prospects, bulk mailing, agency administration,
building customer information system (data mart) and portal features
such as chat.
Virtual
Insure comprehensive application, gives in addition, back end insurance
administration functionality like parameterised product definition,
agency contract and commission administration, policy issuance and
servicing, claims settlement and accounting interface.
Being
a modular and highly scaleable application it can expand as the
business of the insurance company grows.
According
to Srinivasan, most of the existing life insurance software tends
to be on legacy technologies and as such fail to meet the needs
of modern day life insurers.
Virtual
Insure will first be targeted at Indian companies and those in the
Asia Pacific region and phase two will include other markets excluding
the US.
Commenting
on the user friendliness of the software, Srinivasan says that it
is easy to roll out and administer, has drag and drop, and click
and browse features, is flexible, light, adaptable and reliable
and has a parameterised design.
Its
cost effectiveness comes from the fact that its licensing is not
restricted by the number of users. In addition, its component web
architecture makes it scaleable.
"We
have designed Virtual Insure as the next generation insurance software
as it offers a number of compelling benefits to the new insurers,"
says Srinivasan.
He
adds that the product is designed to support in phases traditional
risk, mortgage reducing term assurance, annuities, pension and unit
linked products.
While
there are other software products in this category being offered
by multinationals, they come with service cost component which often
overshoots the cost of the product.
It
is in this area that Virtual Insure aims to score. On the license
fee and services front, Virtual Insure is at least three to five
times cheaper than the competition, he says.
Virtual
Insure front office costs about RS 60 lakh while the comprehensive
module begins at RS 90 lakh. Implementation time is around three
months and customisation effort depends on the needs of users
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