Insurer Leans on MSP

U.K.-based insurance company, NFU Mutual, is spending about $116 million on managed services over the next five years to help it better service its nearly one million customers.

Insurance companies more and more are turning to managed service providers (MSP) to help manage the increasing complex business of insurance. And it takes the insurance outfit out of the IT business so they can focus on business fundamentals. 

MSP Computacenter snagged the five-year NFU deal to “help the company implement a radical IT transformation which will modernize ways of working to deliver long term service improvements and increase the pace of business change at the U.K.'s largest rural insurer,” the companies said.

NFU is indeed a large concern, with 6,500 workers, 300 agencies serving 990,000 policy holders, and $20.6 billion U.S. under management.

"This partnership is a key element of our future plans, providing a modern and flexible infrastructure that will underpin our continued ability to offer first class customer services, support and value for money to our members," said Tim Mann, chief information officer at NFU Mutual.

Under the new approach, set to be done by late summer, Computacenter will install new infrastructure in the form of managed printing (for more on managed printing click here), new storage, servers and mainframe technology, virtual desktops, and new operating systems.

The MSP will also support NSU employees through the Computacenter service desk.

"By combining robust platforms with repeatable processes, we will be able to help NFU Mutual maximize IT performance and resources. This will decrease operational costs while increasing service levels," said John Beard, Sector Director of Financial Services at Computacenter.

Computacenter will also handle request and change management, as well as asset, capacity, configuration and incident chores.

In Other Action

Last May, Safety Insurance Group out of Boston re-upped its MSP deal with CSC, which will not just continue to manage a large swath of IT applications and infrastructure operations, but upgrade Safety’s billing system to Java.