Gen Re

Gen Re, an internationally operating reinsurance company in Cologne has spoted the immediate chances of modifying business processes enabled by web-based technologies. The major focus of two current B2B projects for underwriting operations across Europe lies on an increase in productivity and on quality improvements. Gen Re customers are provided with an Extranet solution, that, for the first time, enables them to access a variety of contract-relevant data and documents directly. Electronically supported business processes between insurer and reinsurer in the field of complex contracts should primarily lead to cost savings and to faster transaction processing, and thus to an increase in process-productivity. Administrative standard procedures are reduced and non value-adding work becomes less expensive. The time gained can be turned into value-adding activities. In this context improving the data quality and thereby the decisions to be made is of the same significance.

At project start adesso supported the analysis of a number of business processes supposed to be suitable for the web and provided a basis for customer interviews. Therefore, profit and cost-benefits were focused as well as the technical feasibility. At first two fields of application were identified from the complete reinsurance process by setting off a so-called "Treatyworld EU" project. These applications were then implemented with high priority:

Experience reports: This application provides both, insurers and Gen Re as their reinsurer, a complete overview on current data records and figures from various insurance-specific points-of-view for the yearly contract negotiations.

Individual Wordings: While working out new contract conditions all contractual partners are provided with a proper versions overview via a “document safe”. All authorized people can access the current versions simultaneously and edit the relevant document alternately.

The gathering and analysis of the requirements was a joint task of adesso business analysts and Gen Re staff. The focus was on an iterative procedure with string feedback mechanisms in order to achieve a reliable and consistent requirements overview.

Based on the Rational Unified Process (RUP), pragmatic (sub-) processes, workers and artifacts, that covered the specific requirements of these e-business projects, were identified. Within the software process we applied the early prototyping and the STRUTS framework.