Hibernian, Ireland’s largest insurance company and their technology partner Kainos were winners of the Most Effective Use of Software at this year’s Information Age Effective IT Awards.
- The winners of the Information Age Effective IT 2006 Awards are revealed
Hibernian, Ireland’s largest insurance company and their technology partner Kainos were winners of the Most Effective Use of Software at this year’s Information Age Effective IT Awards. The accolade is in recognition of "Hibernian B Live", an innovative web-based interactive system enabling Hibernian brokers to offer their clients an instant service, reducing the time taken to issue a policy from seven days to seven minutes.
The Effective IT Awards, now in their third year, recognize those organisations that can prove foresight and skill in the implementation of leading-edge IT projects. This year’s awards attracted over 400 entries and saw competition among some of the largest and most prestigious IT organisations in the UK. B Live was judged to have been impressively innovative, delivering real business benefits since its launch in June 2005. Hibernian and Kainos were also finalists in the financial services category.
“We are delighted to receive this prestigious award and honoured to be among the calibre of companies represented”, commented Michael Garvey, Hibernian director of underwriting and distribution. “B Live has been a terrific success for Hibernian, delivering real benefits and effectively transforming the way we do business.”
Hibernian and Kainos jointly developed B Live enabling Hibernian’s intermediaries to process customer quotes, to write new business, to complete insurance certificates and discs and issue documentation immediately to customers.
Paul Gannon, Director of Kainos Ireland, commented: “Kainos is extremely proud of the B Live project, which ably demonstrates the positive impact technology can have on business efficiency and customer service. It clearly provides a compelling return on investment".
The B Live system is the first of its kind in the insurance industry in terms of the back office access provided to intermediaries, the speed of transaction and elimination of paper from what is traditionally a "paper-heavy" industry has reduced the time and cost associated with transacting business. The key technical challenge was to leverage the functionality of the central business process system and to provide these services quickly, securely and accurately over the Internet to insurance intermediaries.
This is not the first plaudit for Hibernian and Kainos, being recognised at the Information Management Awards 2005 in December last year; winning the B2B award and receiving a nomination for the IM2005 Premier Project Award.
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Press Contact:
Hibernian Insurance
Marie Therese Culligan
Group Media Relations Manager
E-mail: marietherese.culligan@hibernian.ie
Tel: 01 617 8164
Kainos
Suzanne Shaw
Marketing Manager
Kainos
E-mail: s.shaw@kainos.com
Tel: 01 6369001
Notes to editors:
About Hibernian
Hibernian is Ireland’s largest composite insurance group, ranked first for general insurance and top three for life, pensions and investments. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Aviva plc, the sixth largest global insurance group. Aviva trades under the Norwich Union brand in the UK and Northern Ireland.
About Kainos
- With over 170 consultants and sales in excess of Ł10 million last year (2004/05), Kainos, is one of Ireland's largest indigenous business solutions providers.
- Privately held and one of Northern Ireland's first campus companies, Kainos was originally established in 1986 as a joint venture between Fujitsu and The Queen's University of Belfast, Business Incubation Unit. ACT Venture Capital recently joined these investors.
- Extensive experience in key competencies include, software development, business process Management (BPM), integration and consultancy, and developing mission critical business systems, for a variety of blue chip clients in financial services, public sector, retail and utilities across Ireland and the United Kingdom.
- Kainos specializes in delivering award winning enterprise scalable Electronic Document and Record Management, Speech Technology and Information Quality solutions, which seamlessly integrate with client’s business functions to offer one easy to use system.
- The company also possesses a wealth of Systems Integration experience, in leveraging IT investments while minimising risk to deliver complete system integration services and solutions, addressing each clients' unique business needs. Clients include eircom, Information Commissioners UK, Isle of Man Government, Littlewoods, AIB, First Active, IIB Homeloans and Bank of Ireland
- Launched in July 2004, eircom’s award-winning customer services line ‘1901’, developed by Kainos, is still the largest reference site in Ireland for the commercial application of speech technology
- For further information see www.kainos.com