Accenture (NYSE:ACN) released a new version of the Accenture Life Insurance & Annuity Platform (ALIP), an advanced life insurance and annuity software suite. The latest version, ALIP 5.1, includes product, business and technical improvements that increase automation and flexibility, accelerate product development and simplify integration.

ALIP, already known for its configurability and comprehensive list of out-of-the-box product templates, has been improved to provide superior levels of functionality in life product configuration, underwriting support and standard integration processes. These updates are designed to help life and annuity insurance companies in:

  • Empowering the business user: New features supporting the end-to-end policy issue process – including decision support, requirements management, evaluation results and policy journal – increase self-sufficiency and improve speed and accuracy for new business and underwriting. Modernized payout processing functionality such as liquidity value, commuted value and annuity payment calculations are designed to increase annuity speed to market. Additionally, configuration of common tax calculations, supplemental coverages and mortality changes help streamline product development.
  • Improving channel management: New agent and commission capabilities have been added that improve overall channel management and meet changing agent demands. Net commissions, commission balance tracking, compensation adjustments and the ability to support multiple instances of a single agent have been incorporated to increase distribution effectiveness.
  • Extending system flexibility and ease of use: New forms, fields and calculations that enhance customer management, contract management, transaction management and administration capabilities such as billing and correspondence. Additional account views and advanced search functions allow for improved levels of operational efficiencies and minimized customization requirements.
  • Improving implementation speed and simplification: An expanded set of pre-built interfaces help enable fast and simple implementation. Real-time integration with third party underwriting agencies such as the Medical Information Bureau (MIB), Motor Vehicle Records (MVR) and prescription history vendors, batch interfaces, as well as addition of annuity staging tables and an integration workbench reduce time, cost and risk when moving into production with ALIP.
  • Expanding performance and ROI: The addition of Sonar, an open source infrastructure tool that automates code quality checking, as well as improvements to data migration tools helps reduce implementation time associated with configuration management. The most recent ALIP performance test showed significant improvements, including page to page performance, page loading, throughput for large nightly batch processes, and nightly transaction processing throughout.

“We are seeing significant interest in ALIP from carriers looking to transform their business and modernize their systems,” said Shay Alon, managing director of Accenture Software for Life and Annuity. “This is a testament to our continued investment in the platform and dedication to delivering best-in-class capabilities with the most function rich, user friendly and configurable product in the market.”

ALIP is a configurable and scalable software suite that offers life insurance and annuity carriers of all sizes solutions for product development, new business, underwriting, policy administration including claims and payout. These solutions are available as an integrated suite or components that can be implemented individually or as part of a broader migration strategy. ALIP is part of a broader portfolio of life insurance and annuity software solutions offered by Accenture to support mission critical products and processes for carriers. This includes modern technologies to support insurers’ digital agenda, such as SmartVideo, web recording, portals and mobility.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 336,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$30.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014. Its home page is www.accenture.com.