Accenture has signed a seven-year agreement with Aviva’s property claims repair service, Asprea, to provide application and infrastructure outsourcing services for its buildings claims division in the UK, and to improve customer service and increase cost efficiencies.

According to the terms of the agreement, Accenture will develop and manage all the applications that support Asprea’s buildings claims operations, covering the claim validation and fulfillment process, while Asprea will outsource to Accenture its infrastructure services, including workplace, service desk, network and telephony, and data centre services.

Neil Gribbin, managing director of Asprea, said: "By outsourcing our infrastructure and claims applications to Accenture, we can stay focused on continual enhancement of our core competency in claims and delivering further improvements in quality of service to our clients. Accenture’s deep operational experience in IT outsourcing, combined with its insurance expertise, makes it an ideal business partner for Asprea."

Stephen Lathrope, senior executive for financial services practice at Accenture, said: "Bundling application and infrastructure services will enable Asprea to achieve even greater IT standardization and synergies, and to reduce outsourcing management costs. We look forward to delivering best-in-class outsourcing services to Asprea in order for them to provide continued high customer service levels."