US-based Providence Washington, the privately-owned property and casualty insurer, has signed an agreement for a “six-figure sum” with ILOG to integrate its new business rule-making system.
The software package, created by ILOG, will be embedded into Providence's underwriting system and, the company claims, reduce the time to produce insurance quotes by 80%.
An ILOG spokesman said: “The JRules 3.5 engine is web-based and allows more business to travel easily over the internet. It has now been incorporated across much of the financial services industry.”
Clients such as Visa and Deutsche Bank have installed the system and
Providence is the first insurer to take on the system.
It is in the process of restructuring its computer systems around XML data (XML is the language code) and needed an XML-centric solution for exchanging business policy information.
ILOG JRules 3.5 is the industry's first XML-centric business rules software – it can process XML data directly, instead of using another process for the translation. Providence said it would use the new business rule component for its $200m (£138.5m) commercial underwriting division.
Providence Washington's vice president, Ed Leveille, said: “Working with ILOG was an easy choice for our company, as it is the only vendor providing the capability to transmit business rules and accompanying data in an XML format.”
