Further to selling Sherwood Mitronix Ltd earlier this week (CI No 1,281), Sherwood Computer Services Plc has renamed its Computer Centre di~irion as Sherwood Insurance Systems, and has released two new products for the Lloyd’s and international insurance markets. According to managing director Peter MacLean, the new name is a reflection of Sherwood’s primary activities. The new product for Lloyd’s underwriters is called Sceptre, and is designed to replace the company’s five-year-old Sabre system. It is modular in design and available either for the AS/400 or Unix environments. It will be offered as software or as part of a total system, and Sherwood has been approached by several interested manufacturers including Prime Computer, Unisys, and Siemens, and the company hopes to have reached an agreement by the end of this month. Sceptre will link with the London Insurance Market Network, and the several modules include capacity planning, reinsurance management, underwriting, claims management, LPSO transaction handling, statistical analysis & aggregation management, office automation, and direct dealing. Sherwood is also looking to foreign markets and has released an international management system for reinsurance companies called Senator. It runs under Unix, and like Sabre, uses the Unify 2000 relational database, and Accell/SQL. An AS/400 version will be available. Current modules include underwriting management, claims management, closing, statistics, accounts, and systems management. It integrates with the Policy Signing and Accounting Centre electronic claims processing system, and will eventually operate with the electronic slip placing system. Sherwood intends to sign joint marketing agreements in the US and Canada, and is currently talking with insurance and software companies based in Bermuda. Four orders have been placed for Sceptre, two for the AS/400 version, two for Unix, and it will be generally available in first quarter 1990. Costs vary in proportion to the number of modules, but the average is around UKP7,500 per module, with the hardware coming in between UKP150,000 and UKP250,000.
