Paxus Financial Systems Ltd has announced its second generation of applications and development products for the insurance industry which it expects to be available in the fourth quarter of 1991. The new insurance family, Insurance Systems 2, IS/2, is intended to replace Paxus’ general insurance system, Policy, and is aimed at the IBM mainframe and PS/2 workstation user base. Says Paxus, the new system conforms to IBM standards such as SAA, the AD/Cycle strategy – insofar as Paxus has taken on board Ernst & Young’s IEW methodology, but excluding the computer-aided software engineering tools – and the emerging Insurance Application Architecture. This architecture has never been formally announced but IBM is known to be working on it with Policy Management Systems Corp in the US and it forms part of a wider strategy to popularise SAA among specified vertical market sectors (CI No 1,459). The new system comprises packages that are 80% fixed and 20% open to client requirements via Paxus’ AD/MAX applications development architecture. The new system will consist of three components – finance and administration – which covers client support, general ledger and receipting; and contract management, including underwriting, claims and so on; and task management. It is the latter component on which Paxus is depending, to convince its current clients – such as TSB, the Prudential, Abbey National and General Accident in Perth – to upgrade from their Policy systems.
Generic insurance company
Task management, says Paxus, with its diary and register facilities, would typically be used by terminal operators. Although the new insurance system isn’t finished yet, Paxus is already working with four development partners that are currently using AD/MAX – Storebind, a large Norwegian insurance company; an Australian subsidiary of the Dutch company, Amev; and two companies owned by General Accident – NZI in Australia, and a life company in York in the UK. And Paxus hopes to attract new clients, with portfolios of between 300,000 and 5m customers, by offering customisation and strategy above technology. The company is promoting its IS/2 system as being easy to use – using the Information Engineering Workbench from Ernst & Young, Paxus has constructed data and process models to represent a generic insurance company which have been loaded into the active AD/MAX repository – but to customise it and get it up and running will require a lot of client input – Paxus will stay around only long enough to install the system and give the technical staff a basic training. The IS/2 system requires a large mainframe – spot the IBM connection. David Smithson, general manager of the research and development team at Paxus’ head offices in Sydney, reckons that 90% of mainframes used in Europe’s underwriting industry are IBM or IBM-compatible. After targeting the insurance market, Paxus says it will aim the new product towards the financial services and then towards utilities such as electricity and gas companies.
