Delivering BusinessCritical Applications

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Contents

02 Introduction

06 Cheshire Building Society

10 Citigroup

14 Danske Bank

20 Deutsche Bank

24 Hiscox

30 Lloyd’s Register

36 Lloyds TSB

40 Principality

44 For More Information

For information about Microsoft’s experience in the fi nancial services sector, please visit:

www.microsoft.com/uk/business/fi nancialservices or e-mail the Microsoft U.K. Financial Services team at:

fsindust@microsoft.com

To access information about the Microsoft .NET Framework go to:

www.microsoft.com/net

For information on service orientation and software architectures please visit:

msdn.microsoft.com/architect

To access information about Web services please visit:

msdn.microsoft.com/webservices

For additional customer case studies please visit:

www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies

In writing this forward it gives me great pleasure

to consider the changes of mindset as to how

systems are developed and the critical impact

on the business of technology.

At one time the term ‘business critical’ was only

applied to solutions that a fi nancial institution

felt must be available around the clock. The

only business applications that warranted

this accolade were the credit card and ATM

authorisation systems. A number of hardware

manufacturers recognised the opportunity and

developed hardware that when combined with

the appropriate software was considered fault

tolerant and delivered 99.999% availability.

However, as institutions developed an ever

increasing number of departmental solutions,

more parts of the business became totally

dependent on technology to deliver day-to-day

business processing and solutions. This increas-

ing dependency resulted in more applications

being considered business critical.

In the fast moving world that fi nancial insti-

tutions exist in, it is essential that IT supports

the business in a timely manner. Businesses are

now considered to be knowledge based, and

the knowledge needs to be shared between

customers, third parties, and staff. However,

Dermot Doherty is the Microsoft Financial Services Industry Architect focusing on the critical business issues within the fi nance sector. Dermot is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certifi ed Accountants (ACCA) and also a member of the ACCA’s Financial Services panel. Having qualifi ed in industry, Dermot moved into the fi nance sector in 1980 as a product consultant for a software company.

His experience has been gained in UK, European, and Far Eastern banks. Since the early 1990’s Dermot has spent considerable time focusing on business intelligence and mission critical solutions for banks. This has included the use of analytic and modelling techniques to develop and deliver business critical applications in a timely manner.

changing how that knowledge is shared

and the processes supporting it requires the

connection of businesses, systems, services, and

the consumers of the knowledge.

Many, if not all institutions, have a number of

disparate systems each with their own interfaces

to the outside world. For institutions to be

competitive in today’s market a consistent

single view of the customer is required across

technological and business boundaries. By

providing this single view of the customer,

brand identity is strengthened as a result of a

consistent and integrated customer experience.

It is a challenge for fi nancial institutions to

obtain a single view of their customers. The

business users require an application that can

access all the necessary back-offi ce systems

without the user being aware of this interface.

This application will be business critical as it will

need to rapidly address changes in user and

market requirements. This design concept is

referred to as service orientated architecture

(SOA).

Moreover, regulators are now demanding that

institutions react rapidly to new legislative

requirements. In many cases, these requirements

are decreed with minimal notice, and the failure

Introduction

2

“For institutions to be competitive in today’s market a consistent

single view of the customer is required across technological and

business boundaries.”

Dermot Doherty, Financial Services Industry Architect, Microsoft U.K.

3

“This challenge to develop and deliver systems rapidly and at reduced

cost with increased levels of automation within the institution is the

primary challenge facing today’s CIO.”

Dermot Doherty, Financial Services Industry Architect, Microsoft U.K.

4

to comply results in fi nancial penalties being

imposed, or lines of business closed.

This challenge to develop and deliver systems

rapidly and at reduced cost with increased

levels of automation within the institution is

the primary challenge facing today’s CIO. This

is where open standards play a pivotal role,

unlocking information held in legacy systems

and facilitating the integration of these and new

systems with minimal cost and effort.

The revolution in open standards that has

occurred during the past 5 years is around

what are termed Web services. These provide

a standard way to build an SOA, creating the

layer of ‘insulation’ that will facilitate modern

business requirements.

The use of open standards helps the consolid-

ation of existing disparate applications, and

rapid development and deployment of

solutions. An integral part of Web services is

the use of XML to represent data — making it

easier to convert and transform information

and data to create, among other things, the

single customer ‘image’.

Microsoft’s implementation of Web services can

be found in the Microsoft® .NET Framework

development toolset and product line. Anecdotal

evidence clearly indicates that applying the

.NET Framework to these business critical

challenges that I have highlighted will deliver

results by aiding the:

● Rapid development of solutions that unify

existing systems.

● The building of Web services to take an SOA

view of information.

● And the consolidation of diverse systems into

a single service infrastructure.

All of which improve business process and aid

business growth.

Read on to discover more about how enterprises

in the fi nancial services sector are using the

.NET Framework to deliver business critical

applications that have facilitated business

growth, exposed legacy systems, and delivered

new functionality and services.

5

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the

United Kingdom recently introduced changes to

the way in which mortgages were sold, creating

the need for a unifi ed Key Facts Illustration (KFI).

At Cheshire Building Society, the information

needed was contained in a variety of legacy sys-

tems, so the society used the Microsoft® .NET

Framework to develop a Web-based KFI to bring

it all together. Despite the signifi cant regulatory

changes, the society is now able to deliver its

mortgage calculations in half the time it would

have taken using the old systems, negating the

impact of the new regulations. The Cheshire is

now extending its use of the .NET Framework

across the business to ensure it can respond to

future regulatory changes, tough competition,

and changing consumer needs.

SituationNational and global regulatory developments

have led to a signifi cant change in the ways that

mortgages are offered in the United Kingdom.

The new legal framework has led to a change in

the way that mortgage providers carry out their

business, creating the need for a completely new

system at the Cheshire Building Society.

Paul Hunt, Interim Head of IT at the Cheshire,

says: “The FSA has been regulating mortgage

providers since November 2004 and there have

The Cheshire Unifi es Mortgage Systems to Meet Regulatory Demands

also been the changes to capital requirements

laid down in Basel II. As a result, we have had to

undertake a number of large internal projects

that needed to be completed quickly.”

The Cheshire operates in one of the most com-

petitive fi nancial services industries in the world.

Banks, building societies, and Internet providers

all vie for custom from a highly knowledgeable

customer base that expects to be able to use

an expanding number of channels to look at

mortgage options. As a result, every provider is

looking for tools that will give them an edge.

“Mortgages in the United Kingdom have be-

come commoditised; there is no longer any

money in the margin,” Hunt says. “Many cus-

tomers chase the cheapest rates and expect the

best returns, and to ensure we remain profi ta-

ble we have to look at areas where we can save

money to pass the benefi ts onto our members.”

Hunt says that the Cheshire’s branch network,

contact centre, and e-channels all operated

independently so there was no consistency of

service for customers.

Not only was this ineffi cient, it also meant the

society missed cross-selling opportunities,

because customer data held in one area of the

business was not being shared with other areas.

Cheshire Building Societywww.thecheshire.co.uk

Customer Profi leCheshire Building Society is the 11th largest society in the United Kingdom offering mortgage, savings, and insurance products to customers.

Business SituationCheshire Building Society’s mortgage operation works across a variety of legacy systems that were not fl exible enough to respond to recent regulatory changes.

SolutionThe society is using the Microsoft® .NET Framework to unify existing systems and channels to quickly and effectively meet regulatory, competitive, and consumer demands.

Benefi ts● Mortgage quotation engines reduced from

4 to 1.● Tools created in 2 not 25 days.● Rapid response to new regulations.● Build rather than buy new tools.● Improved Microsoft relationship.

6

SolutionTo meet the varied demands on its systems,

the Cheshire turned to the Microsoft .NET

Framework, an integral component of Microsoft

Windows® that provides a programming model

and runtime for Web services, Web applications,

and smart client applications.

The Cheshire has been a Microsoft customer

for around 10 years. “We have been using

Microsoft COM+ since 2000 and it seemed

logical to switch to .NET when we began to

design our new architecture,” Hunt says.

“About a year ago, we had a long look at what

we had and what we needed to achieve, and

using the .NET Framework to address the

challenges made the most sense.”

Within the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003

development system, the society decided to

develop using Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET

2003 as opposed to Microsoft Visual C#®.

The technology team felt it would be easier to

migrate existing Microsoft Visual Basic version

6.0 tools to its direct successor.

Initial work has been done on the society’s core

mortgage systems, reducing the number of

mortgage quotation engines from 4 to 1. This

has been done using Web services to integrate

with existing systems and Microsoft ASP.NET

to provide a Web interface to the information.

“There are a number of legacy systems it has to

work with, because we frankly cannot afford to

get rid of our entire infrastructure at once, but

the .NET Framework is coping well,” says Hunt.

The Cheshire is also using CBI.NET, HP’s

Collaborative Business Infrastructure, which is

based on Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004. It lets

users within the society exchange information

across the business more effectively. “Until now,

CBI.NET has been mainly used in the manufac-

turing industry, so we are leading the way in this

industry,” says Hunt.

Microsoft is working closely with the organis-

ation on its Branch of the Future project, which

will create innovative tools for staff to help

customers. Hunt says: “Queue-buster staff at

our branch in Manchester are already using

technology such as Microsoft Windows XP

Tablet PC Edition.”

Ultimately, the aim is to create a technology

architecture that ensures staff do not have to

think about the applications they use. They

can simply deal with a customer and a business

process. “We want to create a fully integrated

front end,” says Hunt. “We have achieved it with

Business Critical Benefi ts

The Cheshire Building Society needed to mod- ernise its IT to respond to increasing competition and rapid regulatory change. The society wanted to save money, streamline its core systems, and improve customer service so as to retain market share. A major worry was the lack of consistency across different channels when customers were seeking mortgage quotations.

The key to solving this business critical challenge was found in the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Web Services, and Microsoft ASP.NET. The Cheshire has now reduced the number of mortgage quotation engines from 4 to 1, giving the society peace of mind and much better control over its core services to customers.

Among the other key benefi ts from this solution are:● Less re-keying of information and information

delivered quickly to the customer.● Passbook reader developed in 2 not 25 days.● Development done in-house at low cost.● Stronger relationship with Microsoft through

a long-term partnership.

7

“ Microsoft did not offer an enterprise platform a decade ago, but it

has upped the ante over the last 5 years in terms of security, scalability,

and stability. Microsoft is a technology company that wants to work

with us to see how we use their technology as a business.”

Paul Hunt, Interim Head of IT, Cheshire Building Society

“The less re-keying of information there is, the

fewer mistakes there are and the quicker the

customer gets the information they need.”

There has also been an improvement in

robustness. While the 4 quote engines had a

good history of reliability, Hunt says, operating

with only 1 means that there is less potential for

breakdowns and maintenance can be carried

out more quickly.

Developing the mortgage application using the

.NET Framework has also yielded productivity

benefi ts in other areas of the business, as code

can be re-used. “When we went into the new

Insurance: Code of Business (ICOB) regulations,

we used the same approach, meaning that we

only had to write information once. There have

been lots of examples where we have been able

to reuse information,” he says.

Passbook Reader Developed

in 2 Not 25 Days

The time taken to introduce new tools has been

drastically reduced. A new reader for the society’s

passbooks was designed and implemented using

the .NET Framework in just 2 developer days as

opposed to the estimated 20-30 developer days

it would previously have taken. Hunt admits

that this may be an extreme example of the

potential time savings, but suggests that as more

systems and integration layers are developed the

Cheshire will enjoy exponential savings across

the business.

Reducing time to market for new tools will have

signifi cant implications for further improvements

in the organisation’s service and ultimately the

rates it offers members. “We are undergoing

a signifi cant drive to ensure we treat each

customer as an individual,” Hunt says. “The

fi nancial services industry has not been good at

this in the past and we think we have an edge

because we are using the .NET Framework to

connect the different parts of the business.

“In the U.K. for the last 5 years, competition has

been so fi erce. To thrive, we have to be better at

relationships and cross-selling, and developing

more projects with the .NET Framework will help

us do this.”

Making the Cheshire More Responsive

Using the .NET Framework, the Cheshire is

confi dent that it will be able to respond quickly

to changes in the ways consumers access its

services. “While wireless access protocol did not

take off in the way that was expected, there is

a possibility that demand for its successors will

grow, albeit with less ambitious tools initially,”

the mortgage tools, but now we want to extend

those benefi ts across our entire operation.”

Benefi tsMortage Quotation Engines Reduced

from 4 to 1

The use of the .NET Framework has helped the

society to reduce the number of mortgage

quotation engines from 4 to 1 by creating a

Web-based KFI.

The new mortgage system uses Web services

based on data contained on a Microsoft SQL

ServerTM 2000 database. According to Hunt, the

data is currently held in a variety of places and

the Web service has to run through them all,

but as the existing systems are consolidated the

society will achieve further signifi cant improve-

ments in response time.

“Before last year’s changes, there was no regulat-

ory requirement for KFIs,” says Hunt. “Without

the new system developed using the .NET

Framework, it would have taken twice as long

to create a KFI and updating them after a rate

change would have been much more diffi cult.”

The benefi ts extend beyond the society itself.

“Our intermediaries can also access KFIs, so it is

signifi cantly more effi cient for them,” he says.

8

“ Customers chase the cheapest rates and expect the best returns, and

to ensure we remain profi table we have to look at areas where we can

save money to pass the benefi ts on to our members.”

Paul Hunt, Interim Head of IT, Cheshire Building Society

Hunt says. “The .NET Framework gives us the

ability to offer such services to our customers at

a minimal cost in terms of development time.”

It is the small touches that may well build

demand. “It is still early days, but we are

developing a method of sending out photos

with house price details from our estate agency

so potential buyers can have as much informa-

tion on their mobile phones as possible before

going to see a house,” he says. “Customers now

expect services like this as standard and a better

experience of our estate agency may translate

to more mortgage applications.”

Low-Cost In-House Development

Yields Results

The .NET Framework has also changed the

balance in the perennial build or buy debate.

Hunt adds: “By using the .NET Framework it

has become much easier to design our own

tools and we can begin to look at increasing the

services we offer as a result.

“For example, in the past, we would have bought

a system to bring together the mortgage

quotation engines, because to build a platform

would have meant hiring a team of consultants

and freelance system engineers,” he says. “But

with Microsoft technology we have been able

to do the work effectively in-house and create a

system that sets us apart from our competitors.”

Improved Relationship with Microsoft

“Microsoft has always been responsive day

to day, but now we are working together on

longer term business needs,” says Hunt. “Wider

use of the .NET Framework has really changed

the nature of our relationship from support to

strategic.”

This is not simply the result of the interesting

tools that Cheshire is developing. Hunt says there

has also been change in the Microsoft approach.

“Microsoft did not offer an enterprise platform a

decade ago, but it has upped the ante over the

last 5 years in terms of security, scalability, and

stability,” he adds. “Microsoft is a technology

company that wants to work with us to see how

we use their technology as a business.

“As we move forward, we are now constantly try-

ing to think of new uses for the .NET Framework,

as it is signifi cantly more fl exible than the way

we used to approach development,” he says. “We

want to make it easy for our staff to use technol-

ogy to support their working processes, rather

than trying to get them to change their working

practices when we introduce a new system.”

9

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Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Citigroup

created a Web-based information delivery

system for access by employees around the

world. The information delivery framework is

highly confi gurable and offers an unprecedented

degree of agility and responsiveness for

corporate clients, giving Citigroup a business

advantage over the competition.

SituationCitigroup is the largest fi nancial services group

in the world, offering a diverse array of corporate

and personal fi nancial products and the greatest

distribution capacity of any fi nancial fi rm globally.

In 2005, Citigroup generated U.S.$83.6 billion of

revenue and produced U.S.$24.6 billion in net

income to shareholders.

Citigroup offers a range of sophisticated services

to global customers within its Global Corporate

and Investment Banking (CIB) group. Its corporate

and investment banking services depend on the

delivery of accurate, actionable information

to global account teams. Information types

are rich and diverse — market data, video,

news, and equity research. Integrating this

information, making it globally accessible in

real time, and combining information delivery

with collaboration tools would give Citigroup a

competitive advantage.

Citigroup Creates Integrated, Scalable, Secure, and Targeted Information Delivery Infrastructure for Worldwide User Base

CIB’s vision was a browser-based ‘smart’ infor-

mation delivery infrastructure that would provide

investment bankers with targeted, relevant,

personalised, and actionable information. This

would help them to make better, faster decisions,

and to transform the mechanics of global

account team collaboration within Citigroup

and between Citigroup and its customers.

Paul Galant, Managing Director and Global Head

of eCommerce and Market Data Strategy at CIB,

approached Microsoft and said: “Help me build

a highly scalable, secure, and fully personalised

distribution environment for proprietary and

third-party content. The content we need to get

at exists in every fl avour of technology ever sold

on the globe; we have the information but need

a master key to unlock it.”

SolutionIn addition to factors affecting all businesses

today, Citigroup’s size and history create some

unique challenges. Citigroup has grown through

a series of high-profi le mergers and acquisitions.

Content needed by bankers is currently accessed

from a variety of sources and technology types,

including video content, streaming market

data, breaking news, credit information, and

printed research. There was a need to tap into

Citigroup’s proprietary content and to integrate

Citigroupwww.citigroup.com

Customer Profi leCitigroup is the largest fi nancial services group in the world, with more than 120 million customers in more than 100 countries.

Business SituationCitigroup wanted to provide a Web-based delivery platform to distribute targeted and highly personalised information in every fl avour of technology, to its worldwide work- force in the corporate and investment bank.

SolutionUsing Microsoft® .NET-connected software, Citigroup created a Microsoft ASP.NET Web application that built highly customisable Web pages targeted for individual employees.

Benefi ts● Increased business agility and responsiveness.● Increased scalability.● Extensible content retrieval design, to

support new and existing document formats.

10

third-party content from research, news,

and market data providers including Reuters,

Thomson, Bloomberg, and Dow Jones.

Coupled with these business requirements,

Citigroup also required that the new system be:

● Highly scalable to support the extensive cus-

tomer base. In a preliminary attempt to build

an automated solution using non-Microsoft

technologies, the system could scale only to

30 users per server. This prototype system

was dismissed because Citigroup required a

system that could scale up to support 50,000

concurrent users.

● Easy to deploy to the Citigroup workforce

operating in more than 100 countries. A

Web-based system was the preferred option,

because this would have ‘zero touch’ on user

workstations. Such a system would be globally

accessible for the intended user community.

● Easy to use, highly confi gurable, and

‘personalisable’ in real time. The system must

make it easy for bankers to prepare person-

alised portfolios, share new information, and

customise the appearance of information to

their individual needs. Furthermore, the user

interface must be state-of-the-art in terms of

drag-and-drop and resizing functionality, and

visually compelling to increase the ‘stickiness’

of the site.

ASP.NET and Web Services:

The Ideal Combination

In November 2001, Galant approached Microsoft

for a solution to meet Citigroup’s requirements.

A joint development team was assembled, led

by Erik Saltwell from Microsoft Services and Dan

Woodman from the Microsoft .NET Solutions

Architecture team. The team also included

Microsoft consultants and Citigroup developers,

with close collaboration and industry input from

Reuters, Thomson, and Factiva.

The development team had a variety of

skills — including Microsoft C++ development

system, Java, and Microsoft Visual Basic®

development system — but many members had

no prior experience with the Microsoft .NET

Framework, the Microsoft C#® development

tool, or other .NET-compatible languages.

The new system was given the name CitiVision.

The development team decided that the

system would be based on an ASP.NET Web

application hosted on Microsoft Internet

Information Services (IIS), the Web server built

into Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server. Microsoft

ASP.NET and Microsoft IIS were chosen over

other Web server technologies, because of their

superior performance, scalability, and security

capabilities.

“The content we need to get at exists in every fl avour of technology

ever sold on the globe; we have the information but need a master

key to unlock it.”

Paul Galant, Managing Director and Global Head of eCommerce and Market Data Strategy, CIB

Business Critical Benefi ts

Citigroup wanted a browser-based ‘smart’ information delivery infrastructure to give its investment banking team worldwide access to targeted, relevant, and actionable critical information. This would help them make better, faster decisions, and improve collaboration within Citigroup, and between the investment bankers and their customers.

Working with Citigroup, Microsoft® Services recommended basing the CitiVision application on an ASP.NET Web application hosted on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), the Web server built into Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server. It used the Microsoft .NET Framework to develop the solution.

Among the major benefi ts from this solution are:● Savings from replacement of bankers’

dedicated terminals.● Customised dashboards for each corporate

customer.● Immediate access to high-value information

previously in separate systems.● Ability to share real-time information with

customers.

11

The CitiVision Information Framework includes

Web Parts to display content such as market

data, company profi les, and live-streaming

video.

Benefi tsCitiVision provides account teams with

immediate access to high-value information

that previously existed in separate, hard-to-ac-

cess systems. When CitiVision is rolled out to

its global workforce, this will enable bankers to

share information with clients in real time, with

all the attendant business benefi ts and agility

that this entails.

Responsiveness

“Quick response time to user requests is one of

our biggest goals, and CitiVision clearly helps us

to accomplish this,” says Dan Gilman, Director

and Head of eCommerce in the Investment

Banking Division at Citigroup.

CitiVision has generated a high level of user

excitement and acceptance. Real dollar savings

already have been achieved through the

replacement of bankers’ dedicated market

data terminals; CitiVision delivers the same

information to the banker’s desktop computer.

This has enabled easier integration with

Microsoft Offi ce and the Microsoft Offi ce

“ Developing the CitiVision Information Framework was essentially a

one-off effort. Now that we have CitiVision in place, we can leverage it.

We can concentrate on developing new content for our users. We’re

in the business of banking; we let Microsoft build the highways.”

Gary Greenwald, Managing Director, Global Relationship Bank, Citigroup

Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration

client. With CitiVision, users can download

content to e-mail messages or Microsoft Offi ce

Excel® spreadsheet software with a single

click, and there are Web Parts that integrate

the Outlook calendar with CitiVision. This level

of integration makes it easy for users to share

important content with other users in real time.

The Microsoft .NET Framework also proved

capable of addressing the complex and fi ne-

grained security, privacy, logging, and access

control issues central to the delivery of sensitive,

high-value fi nancial information.

Flexibility

In addition to the predefi ned dashboards

provided as part of the CitiVision Information

Framework, bankers can develop individually

customised dashboards for each corporate client

or portfolio of customers. These customised

dashboards are known as ‘channels’ and contain

Web Parts specially chosen and confi gured by

the banker for a customer.

The CitiVision Information Framework provides

a Content Gallery that contains more than 250

prewritten Web Parts. Web Parts can be dragged

from the gallery onto the channel, all within

the normal browser user interface. Custom

Proof of Concept

The Microsoft consultants and team members

from Citigroup spent 3 weeks on the Microsoft

campus, developing a working prototype

for the new system based on the Microsoft

.NET Framework. During this time, the team

defi ned a full object-oriented framework for

the CitiVision application to address all the

functional and non-functional requirements in

the new system.

Solution Architecture

Building on existing insight into the needs

and working practices of bankers and their

customers, the development team completed

development of the CitiVision Information

Framework in 3 months. The entire solution was

deployed within 6 months.

At the heart of the CitiVision Information

Framework is an ASP.NET Web application that

generates Web pages for display in the browser.

The Web pages contain sophisticated HTML

mark up that defi nes the appearance of the

Web page within the browser.

The Web pages comprise a collection of Web

Parts contained in a digital dashboard. A Web

Part is a reusable component that contains

Web-based content such as XML, HTML, or script.

12

dashboards are saved on a Microsoft SQL

ServerTM 2000 database at the Web server and

can be instantly accessed by corporate team

members anywhere.

This degree of fl exibility and customisation

within a browser environment greatly enriches

the usefulness and extensibility of the CitiVision

application.

Agility and Confi gurability

CitiVision provides tremendous agility and

confi gurability. As a proof of concept, Citigroup

built a collection of new dashboards for a

particular market sector. “Using the Microsoft

portal tools, we were able to reorganise the menu

structure and create over 40 new channels in

under 3 hours,” says Gilman.

Citigroup’s Corporate and Investment Bank

has started a CitiVision rollout program in

Europe, and the aim is to support more than

10,000 employees globally. An ambitious 2-year

engineering plan is in place to further develop

the application to support wireless devices,

document management, and workfl ow.

The new application will be based on Web

services, the .NET Framework, and the Microsoft

.NET Compact Framework.

Using .NET-connected software, CitiVision

integrates diverse information from any kind

of Web server platform and makes it available

to a global user base in real time. By delivering

this information using a highly customisable

Web interface, Citigroup investment bankers

can make better, faster decisions.

Gary Greenwald, Managing Director in the

Global Relationship Bank at Citigroup, says:

“Developing the CitiVision Information

Framework was essentially a one-off effort.

Now that we have CitiVision in place, we can

leverage it. We can concentrate on developing

new content for our users. We’re in the business

of banking; we let Microsoft build the highways.”

13

Danske Bank has developed a set of XML Web

services that take advantage of the strengths

of multiple environments. The bank’s fi rst Web

service, a stock-quote service, is expected to

generate signifi cant cost savings for the bank

by routing customer quote requests to a Web

server rather than the mainframe. Built using

the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Danske Bank’s

Web services can be reconfi gured and repack-

aged to meet the needs of diverse customers

and partners, at little incremental cost and

no additional security risk. These services

transform the bank’s IT department from a cost

centre to a centre for strategic advantage and

make it possible to use existing assets to reach

new markets.

SituationAs the largest commercial bank in Denmark,

Danske Bank serves roughly 40% of the Danish

corporate and retail markets, along with

maintaining a signifi cant presence in other

Scandinavian countries. The bank has multiple

brands, each of which serves a particular

customer profi le or geographic region.

The Danske Bank brand, for example, serves an

upscale audience in Denmark, consisting mainly

of private sector companies and their employees.

Another domestic brand, BG, is aimed at more

Danish Bank Uses Web Services to Generate New Revenue Sources Using Existing Assets

highly-educated professionals and public

employees. There is a mainstream Norwegian

brand, Focus Bank, as well as a high-end Swedish

bank called OEB. In addition, the company

sells mortgages under a different brand name,

and insurance and pension plans under yet

another name. Each brand has its own set of

products, channels, and customer preferences,

which translate into a unique set of technical

requirements. For Danske Bank’s IT department,

it was a challenge to support such a diversity

of needs.

10 years ago, the bank realised that it could

establish a major competitive advantage by

consolidating its diverse systems into a single

technology infrastructure. By building a single

infrastructure, the company could take advantage

of its existing technology assets, most of which

were on the mainframe, and repurpose them

for use across many brands, markets, and

channels. This ‘one bank, one system’ IT strategy

would lower IT costs by enhancing effi ciency

and reducing redundancies, while giving the

bank the agility that it needed to react quickly

to market changes and customer needs.

Starting in 1998, Danske Bank began con-

structing a services infrastructure that helped

its 1,200 developers to work together across

Danske Bankwww.danskebank.com

Customer Profi leDanske Bank serves roughly 40% of the Danish corporate and retail markets, and has a signifi cant presence in other Scandinavian countries. The bank has multiple brands, each serving a particular customer profi le or geographic region.

Business SituationDanske Bank sought to establish a cost advantage over competitors by consolidating diverse systems into a single services infrastructure.

SolutionUsing the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Danske Bank was able to expose its mainframe functionality as Web services, and reuse this functionality across a range of brands and customer audiences.

Benefi ts● New sources of customer revenue, with no

additional security risks. ● Reuse of existing mainframe functionality,

to serve a broad range of customer needs and to change easily as needs change.

● Deeper links with partners, integrating applications easily to offer a single, seamless customer experience.

● IT department savings.

14

several platforms, including Java 2 Platform

Enterprise Edition (J2EE), IBM mainframe, and

the Microsoft Windows® operating system.

While integration across these environments

was possible, it was also painful, requiring

developers to write much of the low-level

‘plumbing’ code themselves. And while the

mainframe consolidation could service the

bank’s internal users effectively, it was too

expensive a resource to make available to

external customers.

SolutionWhile Danske Bank was expanding its own

services infrastructure, Microsoft announced

the .NET Framework that connects people,

information, systems, and devices.

The .NET Framework connects a range of

personal and business technologies, helping

users to access important information

whenever and wherever it is needed. Built on

Web service standards, .NET means both new

and existing applications connect with software

and services across environments, applications,

and programming languages.

The .NET Framework would assist Danske Bank

in exposing its internal processes to its partners

and customers in a standardised manner, and

to more easily gain the benefi ts of reuse and

consolidation of its internal applications.

“The one thing we were missing to get the

most out of our ‘one bank, one system’ strategy

was the ability to extend the benefi ts to our

customers and partners,” says Danske Bank

Chief Technology Offi cer (CTO) Peter Schleidt.

“The .NET Framework helps us do that.”

The result would be to open new sources of

customer revenue and to establish deeper and

tighter links with the bank’s partners, all without

incurring substantial new costs or additional

security risks.

Web Service Provides Broad Reach

The fi rst Web service that Danske Bank chose to

make available to customers using Web services

standards was a quote service for stock prices.

This Customer Quote Web Service, rolled out to

customers in November 2002, was built to help

one of Denmark’s largest newspapers, Politiken,

to access quotes from the bank’s mainframe

and make them available to customers for free.

“This service allows us to expose our brand to

a broad reach of our target customers, offering

them a valuable service rather than just a

banner advertisement,” says Klaus Frandsen,

Deputy Head of Market Development for the

domestic bank brands. “Development costs

“ The one thing we were missing to get the most out of our ‘one bank,

one system’ strategy was the ability to extend the benefi ts to our

customers and partners.”

Peter Schleidt, Chief Technology Offi cer, Danske Bank

Business Critical Benefi ts

Microsoft® software and the low cost of entry of Web services based on the Microsoft .NET Framework helped Danske Bank to develop new sources of revenue using its existing IT assets. The bank’s IT department is no longer just a cost centre, but a source of strategic power in meeting the needs of diverse customers and partners.

The fi rst Web service was rolled out in 2002 as a quote service for stock exchange prices and was an immediate success. Other services have followed with the bank’s developers using the .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET development system.

Danske Bank has achieved the following competitive advantages:● An IT infrastructure that is extending the

bank’s market reach.● Proprietary services are extendable to

customers in weeks not months.● Greater business agility through a ‘one bank,

one system’ IT strategy.● Services that other banks can repackage

under their own brand.

15

The Web service uses the content-based routing

capability of the .NET Framework to interpret

who originated the request for a quote. If the

request comes from Politiken, the Web service

checks the low-cost cache storage on the

Web server for the latest update, which could

be as much as 15 minutes old — an entirely

acceptable solution. If a top-tier trading partner

is requesting the update, the request is routed

directly to the mainframe, because real-time

access is critical for these select customers.

With the standards-based security framework

supported by the .NET Framework, the bank

can preserve its rigorous security safeguards

and integrate them tightly with the new service.

Because the Customer Quote Web Service was

assembled from component services exposed

from the bank’s mainframe, those components

are now available for reuse in other information-

request services that the bank wants to offer to

other customer segments.

“Eventually, we expect that all the customer

account status and fi nancial information

capabilities we now have on our mainframe

will become Web services for either internal

or customer access,” says Frandsen. “We have

identifi ed over 100 candidates already.”

“ With the .NET Framework, we’ve applied our tagline to our computing

resources, helping each system to do what it does best and thereby

distributing costs in the most effi cient way.”

Peter Schleidt, Chief Technology Offi cer, Danske Bank

Benefi tsCreates Market Exposure and New

Revenue Opportunities

With its fi rst customer Web service, Danske

Bank has exposed its brand name to the entire

audience of Politiken readers — exactly the mass-

market audience that its BG Bank brand wants

to reach. The bank achieved this broad exposure

to a key market without paying for advertising,

while both development costs and incremental

costs to generate the stock quotes are minimal.

The stock quote service is free to Politiken

readers, but additional services will bring new

revenue streams to the bank. The components

that make up the stock quote service can be

reassembled and repackaged to offer a currency

quote service, a currency-trading service, and

many other similar Web services that will further

extend the bank’s market reach and create new

opportunities for customer revenue.

Improve Effi ciency and Lower IT Costs

Using the .NET Framework, Danske Bank

combined its expensive mainframe resources

with lower-cost commodity hardware resulting

in signifi cant cost savings. “Our bank’s tagline is

‘Do what you do best; that’s what we’re doing,’”

says Schleidt. “With the .NET Framework, we’ve

applied our tagline to our computing resources,

helping each system to do what it does best

were minimal, and we’re not charged for

advertising since we provide value to Politiken’s

customers. So it becomes a form of low-cost

marketing for us.”

The benefi ts fl ow both ways in the partnership

between Danske Bank and Politiken. The news-

paper used to link directly to the European

stock exchange, but that meant customers

left their site and often didn’t return. With

the standards-based architecture of the .NET

Framework, however, integration between the

bank’s mainframe stock updates and the news-

paper’s online presence is seamless, creating the

customer experience that Politiken desires.

Caching Yields Signifi cant Cost Savings

Before the .NET Framework became available,

such a service would have been impossible

because it would require each quote request

to access the bank’s mainframe, a prohibitively

expensive solution. With the .NET Framework,

Danske Bank was able to expose the mainframe’s

stock and currency updates as a Web service

and cache them on a low-cost Web server,

reducing costly mainframe access to once every

15 minutes rather than potentially hundreds of

times a minute. According to Schleidt, the cost

savings of using cached data amounts to roughly

5% of the bank’s IT operating budget.

16

and thereby distributing costs in the most

effi cient way.” Without this effi cient distribution

of computing resources, Danske Bank could not

have offered stock and currency quote services,

because mainframe access for hundreds of

customers would have been prohibitively

expensive.

Integrates with Partners for a Seamless

Customer Experience

Partnering with a leading Danish newspaper,

Danske Bank presents its retail banking brand

as an integrated part of the newspaper’s online

presence. With Web services, partners can

agree on who retains control of the customer

experience while presenting a single, seamless

look to the customer. Partner integration can

follow the logic of the business relationship

rather than being held captive by technical

limitations.

“The .NET Framework creates a common

technical language with partners,” says Ebbe

Larsen of Danske Bank, who leads the Politiken

project. “We used to have to reinvent the

technical wheel with every new business

alliance. Now with the .NET Framework, we’ve

eliminated the need to negotiate at a technical

level, and we can focus on the business issues

instead.”

Defi nes Your Own Security Requirements

Security is an important element of any

fi nancial service and is especially critical for

online transactions. Danske Bank, like most

organisations, has its own unique security

requirements and has implemented its own

security model for Web transactions. “The

beauty of the .NET Framework,” says Larsen,

“is that it provides a standards-based security

framework that helps partners to create their

own defi nition of a secure ‘handshake’ within

that framework.” In this case, Danske Bank uses

digital signatures from its mainframe application

and passes them through the .NET-connected

security framework to an approved recipient on

the other end.

How the Transformation Was Done

The fi rst step that Danske Bank took in

transforming mainframe applications into a

set of widely reusable Web components was to

convert mainframe functionality from a pro-

prietary format into standards-based output,

in this case to simple object access protocol

(SOAP)-based messages. Once converted, these

components are usable in any Web service,

deliverable to any location or platform, and

viewable on any device.

Once Danske Bank made its collection of

fi nancial service components available as Web

services, a process that took only a few days,

developers then assembled these components

into a loosely-coupled application that

eventually became the quote service. The loose

coupling was achieved by linking components

with messages and routing instructions that

would call the appropriate component when

it needed to be used, regardless of where it

resides. The Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET

development system made the assembly easy

and helped developers to orchestrate the

interactions between components in less than

a week.

Content-based routing instructions in Visual

Studio .NET make it possible for the quote

service to interpret whether a Politiken reader

or a tier-one customer is requesting a quote,

and to route the request as appropriate to

either the mainframe or the lower-cost Web

server. The unique routing capability, available

only through the .NET Framework, means

developers can differentiate among user

identities and dictate precise instructions based

on those identities. This ability is critical in a

message-based Web application, because of

the diversity of users, devices, and locations

that the application serves. Because all devices

17

(including the cache storage for less-frequent

quote updates, the mainframe, and the request-

or’s browser) understand the XML-based SOAP

messages, this common language means all

systems can participate in the loosely-coupled

application.

“In the past, we would have had to convince

a partner such as Politiken to use our propri-

etary technology in its systems to achieve this

type of integration,” says Claus Torp Jensen,

Chief Architect at the bank. “Now we simply

ask partners to use the common business-to-

business Web integration standards, which

helps both parties to expose their internal assets

in a secure and low-cost fashion and to make

them available to all business partners, not just

to us. The excellent Microsoft tools and low

cost of entry make .NET-based Web services a

natural choice.”

Before the .NET Framework, Danske Bank devel-

opers would have had to build the plumbing

needed to send or interpret messages between

different systems, transform those messages

to different environments, monitor and trace

delivery, help enforce security, and perform

many other such low-level functions necessary

for proper functioning of an application. This

plumbing is built into the .NET Framework, and

Visual Studio .NET, and makes the developer’s

experience so transparent that the developer

doesn’t even need to know what the underlying

environments are.

While security is not critical to the stock quote

service, it certainly will be when Danske Bank

implements fi nancial transaction-based

services. Says Jensen: “It was important for us

to have a standard carrier of security tokens

and also a ‘plug point’ where we could plug in

an interpreter for our own security mechanism.

The .NET Framework provided both.”

This dual provision helped Danske Bank to

maintain its existing digital signature security

system for mainframe applications, a trusted

system that the bank has used for many years.

With the .NET Framework, the bank simply

passes the secure signatures by wrapping them

in a SOAP message and lets the application

infrastructure on either end verify signature

validity using its own proprietary code. “The

.NET Framework security technologies help us

to establish a security gateway that transforms

any type of security into a simple identity token,

independent of business data, helping us to

control security more tightly,” says Jensen.

Next Steps

While today’s customer quote service is focused

on extending market reach, Danske Bank has

its sights on several new revenue opportunities

that Web services make possible. The next step

will be to integrate fi nancial information and

transactional services from the bank’s mainframe

with related business services from partners.

Some will carry a Danske Bank brand, while

others will be offered through the partner’s

customer portal. Either way, seamless integration

will make these services part of a single, holistic

customer experience.

“Today,” says Frandsen, “lots of what corporate

customers buy from banks is commoditised.

As soon as you can offer something unique to a

customer, something that works well with their

own systems, that’s a competitive advantage.

A lasting one. Only large banks with a strong

edge in IT and a head start in Web services

can do that.”

The fi rst partner solution that Danske Bank

planned was to integrate its cash management

and currency trading services with a corporate

enterprise resource planning system. “The pos-

sibilities are endless,” Frandsen says. “Treasury

management systems integrated with currency

trading. Human resource systems integrated

“With the .NET Framework, we’ve extended our reach to our

customers and partners, and integrated our processes across

multiple business lines, making our IT strategy a central part

of our company’s business strategy.”

Claus Torp Jensen, Chief Architect, Danske Bank

18

with pension management. Fleet management

systems integrated with lease management.

There’s no reason we couldn’t work with all

of them.”

Danske Bank also is looking at making a

collection of services available as a ‘fi nancial

toolbox’ that other banks could repackage and

offer under their own brand. “Once a few large

banks have established their presence with Web

services, smaller banks will fi nd it more cost

effective to rebrand our reusable services than

to build their own,” says Frandsen. “This too is a

lucrative revenue opportunity for us.”

Danske Bank has built a foundational technology

infrastructure that is delivering value to an

important new set of target customers and

extending the bank’s market reach. In the

future, this infrastructure will provide new

opportunities for revenue generation and for

differentiated service offerings, under Danske

Bank brands, or through integration with

business partners.

With the .NET Framework and Web services, the

bank can build a set of components that can be

reused and reconfi gured repeatedly to expose

its vast store of mainframe-based computing

assets to a range of customers and partners.

Because of the standards-based design, the

bank has been able to harness the unique

strengths of many technology environments

and combine them into a single services

architecture that makes the most effi cient use

of computing resources. The Visual Studio .NET

development system has made the transition

to this new architecture smooth and easy,

and development times have been drastically

reduced. The bank can take any existing

service that is available in its proprietary service

architecture and make it available to customers

within weeks.

“When we decided 4 years ago to implement

a services infrastructure, it was clear to us that

we could greatly improve our cost effi ciency

by using every asset we had, both technical

and personnel,” says Jensen. “With the .NET

Framework, we’ve extended our reach to our

customers and partners, and integrated our

processes across multiple business lines, making

our IT strategy a central part of our company’s

business strategy. By implementing Web services

deeply within our company’s infrastructure,

we’re able to reap the full benefi ts of this

exciting new technology.”

19

Deutsche Bank is using an online recruitment

and management system to recruit more than

1,000 full time and intern graduates, and MBAs

every year. Recruiters in the U.K., Europe, United

States, and Asia are sifting through applications

from more than 80,000 students worldwide,

booking interviews, and recording feedback

and results around the clock. This is of strategic

importance as more than 50% of employees

working for Deutsche Bank are not based in

Germany, and work across several time zones.

The system — Konetic — was designed by

Kprime, a leading U.K. IT provider, and is based

on the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Microsoft

Visual Studio®.NET, and XML Web services.

The system connects businesses, customers,

systems, and services.

SituationWith assets of almost €1tn (U.S.$1.2tn) and

over 97,000 employees, Deutsche Bank offers

fi nancial services in over 70 countries. It ranks

among the leaders in asset management,

capital markets, corporate fi nance, custody,

cash management, and private banking.

The bank is organised in 2 customer-oriented

groups — Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB)

plus Private Clients and Asset Management

(PCAM). Key to the bank’s success is its com-

Deutsche Bank Manages Global Graduate Recruitment Online

mitment to customer service, products,

innovation, and technology. As a knowledge-

based business, fi nding and recruiting the best

talent from universities and business schools

is of strategic importance. Approximately 100

company recruiters worldwide manage this

process, supported by line managers actively

involved in the selection process.

Applicants can apply for a large number of

vacancies across different business units and

multiple regional offi ces, so recruiters need to

share information on candidates globally and

track over 80,000 different applications.

Dr Paul Worthy, CEO of Kprime, says: “In today’s

marketplace, organisations may be recruiting

fewer graduates but receiving more appli-

cations. They need a tool to attract and identify

key candidates effectively and cost-effi ciently.”

SolutionKprime is a forward-thinking, U.K.-based soft-

ware company that demonstrates leadership

through its engineers and managers, many

of whom have MScs and PhDs. The company

designed, built, and delivered Konetic, a human

capital management (HCM) system using the

.NET Framework, Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft

Windows® 2000, Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000,

XML, and Web services.

Deutsche Bankwww.db.com

Customer Profi leDeutsche Bank is a global investment bank and ranks among the leaders in asset management, capital markets, corporate fi nance, custody, cash management, and private banking.

Business SituationIn today’s marketplace, organisations may be recruiting fewer graduates but receiving more applications. They need a tool to attract and identify key candidates effectively and cost-effi ciently.

SolutionDeutsche Bank is using an online recruitment and management system to recruit more than 1,000 full time and intern graduates and MBAs every year. The solution is based on the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio®.NET, and XML Web services. This helps developers to create applications from new and existing code, regardless of environment, programming language or object model.

Benefi ts● Web pages with interview results are updated

in real time. Rapid design, test, and build of code through reusable objects.

● Handles more than 80,000 applications from candidates in 9 countries, 24x7.

● Scalable, open architecture with the fl exibility to cope with surges of 100,000 applications and more during recruitment campaigns.

● Concurrent access by over 250 line managers, recruiters, and potential hires.

20

Worthy says: “IT managers are free to allocate

human resources as they think fi t because

developers can use the languages they are

most familiar with. The .NET Framework

helps developers to use different languages

at different places in the platform. We used

Microsoft Visual C#® development tool in the

middle layer and Microsoft ASP.NET in the front

layer, for example, but there are 25 languages

supported.”

The .NET Framework helps developers to

build Web-based applications, smart client

applications, and XML Web services appli-

cations over a network using standard protocols

such as simple object access protocol (SOAP)

and hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP). It offers

standards-based interoperability, modular

and reusable code, and multi-language

connections.

All recruitment information is stored in the

SQL Server 2000 database. The Konetic system

enables recruiters to access, view, and analyse

over 100,000 applications in a familiar in-box

view from a Web browser.

Konetic helps recruiters to sift through

applications from more than 80,000 students

worldwide, book interviews, and record

feedback and outcomes. Adam Wright, Account

and Project Manager for Deutsche Bank at

Kprime, says: “Prior to .NET, we would have

created the application using standard Web

forms, which would have had to query the

server before returning an answer. It would have

been very slow and cumbersome. But the Web

services-based application dynamically updates

pages in real time, which is vital to recruiters

searching for the candidates’ interview results.”

Recruiters can search more than 100,000

concurrent applications to fi nd key candidates

and arrange interview dates. During the

campus recruitment project, they scheduled

more than 1,300 candidate interviews in

multiple locations. This was of strategic

importance to Deutsche Bank.

The system offers rich, interactive user interfaces

with a familiar look-and-feel. Worthy says: “The

.NET Framework helped us to develop a system

that looks like a desktop application. This is

vital for people using it for 8 or 9 hours a day.

The solution took just 9 weeks from signing the

deal to launching the system in 5 regions. This

speed of development offers a huge commercial

advantage to companies wanting to get to

market fast.”

“ In today’s marketplace, organisations may be recruiting fewer

graduates but receiving more applications. They need a tool to

attract and identify key candidates effectively and cost-effi ciently.”

Dr Paul Worthy, CEO, Kprime.

Business Critical Benefi ts

Deutsche Bank recruits more than 1,000 top graduates and MBAs every year. It needed an automated and cost-effective system to help identify the right candidates from more than 80,000 different applications.

The bank deployed Konetic, a human capital management system, using the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET, Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server, XML, and Web services.

Deutsche Bank is gaining several key benefi ts from the system:● Fast time to market with the application rolled

out worldwide in 9 weeks.● Flexibility to develop multi-language versions

of the system.● Manages large volumes of graduate

applications.● Robust development environment with

familiar Microsoft technologies.

21

Since developing the solution for Deutsche

Bank, Kprime has been invited to customise and

implement it at a large international law fi rm.

The system can be deployed in-house or as a

remotely managed solution in any market sector.

Benefi ts Scalable Architecture

Recruiters in 9 countries routinely handle more

than 80,000 applications from candidates

all over the world, around the clock, but the

system has the fl exibility to cope with surges in

demand during recruitment campaigns.

Wright says: “Konetic has demonstrated that

it has the fl exibility to cope with large volumes

of applications from diverse sets of candidates.

But each individual applicant has a tailored and

personalised application console to provide

them with a very rich experience during the

recruitment process.”

Optimised and Auto-Generated Code

Worthy says: “We worked rapidly because of

the pre-built libraries of code available within

the .NET Framework. The code covers 80% of

commonly used coding requests and code can

be reused in an application or new service.”

“ Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET give us a fast but robust development

environment and real commercial advantage. We can deliver solutions

tailored to our customers’ exact requirements at a fraction of the cost

of previous technologies.”

Dr Paul Worthy, CEO, Kprime .

Ease of Development, Deployment,

and Maintenance

Wright says: “Visual Studio.NET is a true

development environment. The server

environment (Microsoft Windows 2000 and

Microsoft SQL Server) were linked by the

common language runtime. This means we can

use different languages at different places in

the environment.”

Worthy agrees: “The key strength of Visual

Studio .NET is that developers can use any of

the 25 languages supported. This means they

can use the tools they are most comfortable

with rather than being shoe-horned into having

to learn new languages at speed.”

Jeremy Holland, Head of Development, led

Kprime’s implementation for Deutsche Bank.

The .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET

development system impressed him. He says:

“The .NET Framework was invaluable in helping

us to complete a signifi cant implementation

on time and to budget.

“The robustness of the platform, comple-

mented by the rich depth of available functions,

meant that the timeframe between design and

release was reduced enormously. Visual Studio

.NET helped us to rapidly develop bespoke

toolsets for speeding up the development

process.”

Worthy agrees: “Visual Studio and the .NET

Framework gives us a fast but robust develop-

ment environment and real commercial

advantage. We can deliver solutions tailored

to our customers’ exact requirements at a

fraction of the cost of previous technologies.”

The solution has the openness and fl exibility to

develop multi-language versions. Worthy says:

“We already offered candidates the opportunity

to ask questions and receive answers in

Japanese, although the system does not have

full Japanese language functionality yet.”

22

23

London-based Hiscox Insurance Company has

a century-long history of underwriting rare

and diffi cult-to-insure items. The company’s

activities cover a diverse range of products,

from bloodstock to satellites, meaning that

its claims process is rarely straightforward. It

wanted to increase the fl exibility of its responses

to insurance claims and ensure it surpassed

regulatory expectations.

To achieve this, Hiscox created a new claims

management system (CMS) using the Microsoft®

.NET Framework. The new CMS replaced the

paper-based claims process, letting experts

electronically attach notes on losses and

relevant secondary data such as photos of dam-

age, rather than storing and archiving reams of

paper. Using the .NET Framework, the company

has signifi cantly accelerated claims processing,

reduced running costs, and passed on these

benefi ts to customers and shareholders.

SituationHiscox is a London-based specialist insurance

group with roots going back 100 years. The

fi rm insures a variety of specialist products such

as race horses, fi lm productions, and works of

art. The complexity of these items means that

honouring claims can be an intricate process.

The company covers retail, specifi cally high-net-

Hiscox Transforms Claims Management ProcessWith Automated Systems

worth for individuals, as well as Lloyd’s business

insurance specialist technical operations such as

the launching of satellites.

In early 2002, most claims were still processed

manually and a great deal of paper was being

passed to various business areas before a claim

could be honoured. Given the nature of the

products being insured, Hiscox recognised

the need to improve its speed of response to

claims, many of which were unique and of

exceptionally high value. Paying claims quickly

is good business sense, because it proves the

company’s reliability, but it has to be done in a

way that ensures the validity of a claim and does

not compromise the business nor the insurer’s

regulatory responsibilities.

Creating a more effi cient CMS would also reduce

the administrative costs of archiving. In a paper-

based system, hard copies of relevant faxes and

fax receipts had to be archived and the cost

of managing and maintaining such in-depth

records was more expensive. It also took up to

a day to locate or retrieve a document. Many

of these were stored in the company’s branch

offi ce in Colchester, 50 miles to the north-east

of London. This added to the time taken to

answer queries.

Hiscoxwww.hiscox.com

Customer Profi leHiscox Group offers specialist insurance services to high net worth individuals and corporates.

Business SituationDespite the diversity of the group, there were effi ciencies that could be enjoyed by accelerating the claims process and reducing the cost and ineffi ciencies associated with paper-based claims processing.

SolutionHiscox used a range of Microsoft® tools to create an electronic claims management system, signifi cantly speeding up the claims process.

Benefi ts● Scalable solution.● Deliver business intelligence.● Compliance and ease of audit.● Improved customer service.● Integration across systems.

24

At the same time, the company recognised

that it could signifi cantly reduce costs and

ineffi ciencies by bringing together the claims

management processes of subsidiaries: Hiscox

Insurance Company, the U.K. retail insurance

division, and Hiscox Syndicate 33, the Lloyd’s

underwriters. While both worked in very different

ways and in different markets, the claims man-

agement process was similar and as a result

could be unifi ed, bringing signifi cant potential

for economies of scale.

Meanwhile, the Basel II capital adequacy

requirements had meant that the business

needed to manage its reserves effectively to

ensure compliance. Hiscox recognised that it

could meet its commitments more effectively

using technology.

Adam Rushin, U.K. and Europe Operations

Director at Hiscox in London, says: “Managing

claims is fundamental to what we do. If the

system does not work then we cannot honour

claims our customers make.

“This is more than an inconvenience for them,

it would undermine the whole purpose of

insuring. As a result, we have to be completely

confi dent in any solution that we use.”

It was becoming clear that standing still was

not an option. “Claimants now take for granted

the speed of service in industries such as banking

and expect us to be equally responsive in our

business,” says Rushin.

SolutionTraditionally, the insurance industry has not

been an early adopter of technology, but

Hiscox recognised that automating the claims

management process had the potential to

improve working practices and unify claims

management within the company’s subsidiaries.

“We wanted to implement a business process

that reduced business costs and provided effec-

tive cash management, while still focusing on

improved customer service, to further support

our image in the marketplace,” says Rushin.

“Delivering improvements in how we manage

working capital was key, particularly because of

the changes since Basel II.

“We needed to improve the claims management

processes so that a broker can track a claim all

the way online,” he says. “We also wanted loss

adjustors to be able to enter details into the

system directly so there was no re-keying of

information, and then add notes and fi les such

as videos and photos.

“ Claimants now take for granted the speed of service in industries such

as banking and expect us to be equally responsive in our business.”

Adam Rushin, U.K. and Europe Operations Director, Hiscox

Business Critical Benefi ts

London-based Hiscox needed to automate its claims management process. The specialist underwriting fi rm seized the opportunity to reduce costs and improve effi ciencies, while also ensuring easier compliance with new regulations.

Hiscox used the Microsoft® .NET Framework to deliver a new claims management system (CMS), Microsoft ASP.NET for the Web-based user interface, Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000 database, and Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003, part of Microsoft Windows Server SystemTM integrated server software. The technology integrated easily with Hiscox’s other business systems.

The range of benefi ts extended to Hiscox included:● New tools and services rolled out more

quickly.● Better use of critical data and improved

claims management.● Automated audit trail for compliance.● Claimants reimbursed in 24 hours.● Re-keying of information eliminated.

25

forward signifi cantly outweighed any perceived

risk, and it has repeatedly proved itself.”

CMS Is Built on a Variety of Microsoft

Technologies:

● Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000 is used to store

claims information, including copies of the

original policy.

● ASP.NET is used to generate the Web-based

user interface.

● The whole system runs on Microsoft Windows

ServerTM 2003, which includes the core

infrastructure for running and delivering

applications using Microsoft Internet Security

and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000.

It has drastically reduced the amount of paper

within the claims process, letting the group

consolidate the claims management process

across the organisation, save administration

costs, and deliver a signifi cant improvement in

the quality of service customers enjoy.

“Using SQL Server 2000 in a true relational

model lets us maximise the use of data,” says

Rayner. “It lets us use a lot of data that we did

not previously have access to, which adds

signifi cant value to the process.”

“ While the .NET Framework was new to the industry in 2002,

we were confi dent that it would provide exactly what we needed

because it was based on a mature language and was quicker

and more fl exible than alternatives.”

Gary Rayner, Senior Project Manager, Hiscox

CMS Was Delivered in 4 Phases:

● The fi rst phase put 4 products on the system.

It took 12 months for this phase to go live,

making sure that the business was clear what

was being delivered and testing it extensively.

● Phase 2 took around 4 months and extended

the functionality of the CMS as well as adding

a further 16 products to the system.

● Phase 3 saw a similar number of products

added over 5 months. General access for

brokers and assessors also went live as part

of this phase.

● The fi nal phase, which was introduced in

mid-2005, added localised tools to ensure

that it can be used in Hiscox subsidiary offi ces

in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the

Channel Islands, as well as adding support for

4 totally new insurance products.

Benefi tsScalable Solution

Working in the .NET Framework has meant

that the CMS is highly effi cient, but also has

the capacity to support the fi rm’s creation of

more high-volume products. “The system has

a signifi cant capacity, so we have the freedom

to expand the range of products we offer if we

choose,” says Rayner. “In the past, technology

has constrained our capacity for development,

but this is no longer the case.”

“Finally, they needed to track the claim through

the complete process.”

The fi rm spent 6 months looking at off-the-shelf

options before going out to tender to create

a bespoke system. Gary Rayner, Senior Project

Manager, Hiscox, says: “We looked in the

market to see what systems were out there, but

we came to the conclusion that this was not

an effective route to take. Buying off-the-shelf

would have given us savings in the short term,

but we felt that it would have cost too much to

tailor a system to make it fi t our requirements.”

Hiscox has had a 5-year relationship with

independent service provider Bytes Technology,

to which it turned to deliver the new CMS. The

company recommended that Hiscox use the

.NET Framework, an integral component of

Microsoft Windows® that provides a program-

ming model and runtime for Web services, Web

applications, and smart client applications.

“While the .NET Framework was new to the

industry in 2002, we were confi dent that it

would provide exactly what we needed because

it was based on a mature language and was

quicker and more fl exible than alternatives,”

says Rayner. “The strategic decision to move

26

Rayner says that the .NET Framework also

helped the company to deliver new tools and

services far more speedily, because systems

move from the design to the live phase very

quickly. “From previous experience, the testing

and release phase is a lot easier and more

fl exible,” he adds. “New releases of the system

can be done in an hour, and this brings the

budget down signifi cantly.”

Improved Expert Profi ling

The system also lets Hiscox improve the service

it provides by rating experts according to their

expertise. The breakage or loss of an insured

item is a diffi cult time, but using a CMS based

on the .NET Framework has ensured that Hiscox

offers an expert response to individual cases.

“CMS lets us rate our experts, so we know exactly

what their strengths are. This gives us an extra

level of transparency so we can see who should

be assigned to a case,” says Rushin.

Delivers Business Intelligence

Using the .NET Framework has let Hiscox

access data that has signifi cantly benefi ted the

business. Peter McLoughlin, London-based

claims underwriter at Hiscox, says: “The CMS

has exposed a lot of data that we did not know

we had, and done it in such a way that we can

quickly take advantage of it. We are now able to

monitor the speed of claims and the effective-

ness of our products, helping us to become a

more streamlined organisation.”

McLoughlin says benefi ts include:

● Automation of claims movement alerting.

● Transparency and access to information

without the need to rely on IT support.

● Information regarding the time taken to

process claims.

● What claims are in the pipeline.

● How individual experts are rated.

Taken together this has signifi cantly improved

the company’s understanding of how it

manages claims activity.

Compliance and Ease of Audit

The CMS also helps Hiscox stand out when

it comes to audit and compliance, because it

automatically records all the details of a claim,

its progress, and relevant notes.

“The CMS gives us central control over every-

thing we do,” says McLoughlin. “Every e-mail

message sent regarding a claim is automatically

fi led with the case and can be found easily in

seconds. With the previous system, physical fi les

could be stored either in London or Colchester,

so it took signifi cantly longer to answer a query.

“We were recently audited by a broking

company. We gave them access to the CMS and

they sat in the offi ce for 4 hours, after which

they left with all the information they needed,”

he adds. “The important thing to note is that

during those 4 hours, they did not have to ask

any questions, they could fi nd everything they

needed, and we could carry on with our work.

“Another benefi t is at a far lower level. With

the CMS, anyone with access can get to the

information they need. Even if the person

directly involved with a specifi c case is on

holiday when a query comes up, there is no

need to go into their offi ce, work through their

fi les or turn on the computer. The CMS provides

all the information required without having to

interrupt daily activities.”

Improved Customer Service

The system is designed to recognise claims

that are reasonable and ensure that claimants

are reimbursed within 24 hours. This has

signifi cantly reduced the paperwork and

administration time needed for a standard

claim, and lets the claims team concentrate on

more in-depth work.

“We can now make retail payments on the

day of the claim,” says Rayner. “The system can

27

create a cheque or BACS payment automatically

if the claim falls within a set of predefi ned

criteria. Rather than retaining a team of fully

trained lawyers to look over every claim, most

can be looked after by administrative staff and

only escalated in exceptional circumstances.”

“Before the CMS was introduced, we processed

around 800 claims per annum per person,” says

McLoughlin. “We now process more than 1,000.

At the same time we have reduced the amount

of claims that we outsource, from about 50%

of the business that we deal with to about

20%.” Rushin adds: “By automating many of

the simple administrative tasks, our teams can

focus on tasks that require their experience and

knowledge, and use their brains to make a real

difference in each transaction.”

Integration Across Systems

The CMS is integrated very deeply with other

systems at Hiscox. Says Rayner: “It is integrated

across a variety of systems, which previously

did not communicate, so we can be far more

structured and organised. It has also minimised

re-keying of information, so the potential for

mistakes is reduced.”

Using the .NET Framework, the CMS integrates

with a variety of systems including Insure 90

for fi nancial processing, Magic Eurobase, which

holds syndicate policy information, document

management system Hummingbird DocsOpen,

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 communi-

cation and collaboration server, and SQL

Server 2000.

“Because of the way that it is designed, team

leaders can keep control of their teams author-

ity levels automatically, which means that they

can proactively approach problems. Rather than

having to check over paperwork on a Friday

afternoon, we can be notifi ed immediately if

someone exceeds their authority; it is instantly

fl agged up and we can address the situation,”

says McLoughlin.

Rayner believes the fl exible nature of the

.NET Framework has delivered a variety of

benefi ts to the business. “Working with the .NET

Framework means we can amend the system

quickly and with minimal downtime as new

business needs become clear,” he says.

“We have been very impressed with how

the system has integrated with our existing

products and how it lets us take advantage of

data that we could not previously use.”

“ By automating many of the simple administrative tasks, our teams

can focus on tasks that require their experience and knowledge,

and use their brains to make a real difference in each transaction.”

Adam Rushin, U.K. and Europe Operations Director, Hiscox

28

29

Lloyd’s Register has existed since 1760, provid-

ing independent risk assessment and mitigation

services. Its 5,500 staff, 40% of whom are

classifi ed as mobile, operate out of 234 offi ces

in 120 countries in Europe, the Middle East,

Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The non-profi t-

distributing organisation took the decision to

consolidate its diverse IT architecture 3 years

ago, choosing the Microsoft® environment over

alternatives such as Linux.

The previous architecture included more than

100 data centres running a mixture of Microsoft

Windows NT® version 4.0, Enterprise Edition,

and versions 3 and 4 of Novell NetWare. In

addition, the IT division supported more than

62 different PC types globally.

It also moved from HP OpenMail to Microsoft

Exchange 2000 Server, and consolidated

76 Unix servers down to 56 Exchange 2000

Servers; a further reduction to 20 is expected

when Lloyd’s Register completes the move

to Exchange Server 2003 shortly. As a result,

IT operating spend at Lloyd’s Register has

dropped by more than 30%. The company is

now looking to develop more and more appli-

cations using the Microsoft .NET Framework,

particularly to bolster its support for mobile

staff.

Lloyd’s Register Cuts IT Spend by A Third

SituationLloyd’s Register has offered risk assessment and

mitigation services for nearly 250 years. Having

begun its life examining and classifying the

sea-worthiness of merchant ships, its opera-

tions have since expanded into management

systems, land-based industries, and oil and gas.

Lloyd’s Register’s IT infrastructure has evolved

sporadically. Stephen Hand, Group IT Director,

Lloyd’s Register, says: “In terms of technology,

this was a very fragmented organisation, with

each country operating as an independent unit.

Resources were spent on overlapping systems,

and information fl ow was restricted. We needed

to create a global infrastructure.”

Daniel King, Head of Architecture, Lloyd’s

Register, says: “We had data centres in 100 of

the 234 offi ces. This meant it was not easy to

get data from one system to another. The IT

department supported 62 different models of

desktop and laptop, and so support was taking

far more of our time than it should have.”

Savings are fundamental to any business, but

the risk assessment arm of Lloyd’s Register has

a wider responsibility. The company registers

fl eets of ships and has a global remit to ensure

that safety standards are maintained, classifying

Lloyd’s Registerwww.lr.org

Customer Profi leLloyd’s Register provides safety certifi cation for a range of marine and land-based infrastructure globally.

Business SituationThe IT approach had evolved rather than been designed, with each of the company’s 120 national offi ces operating independent IT strategies.

SolutionLloyd’s Register used a range of Microsoft® tools to introduce a unifi ed IT strategy across its entire global operation, signifi cantly reducing costs in the process.

Benefi ts● Global IT spend down to 4%.● 75% reduction in servers.● Improved information sharing.● Supporting mobile working.● Rapid response to change.

30

shipping, oil platforms, and physical infrastruc-

ture according to safety levels. “This is not just

about the bottom line; this is using IT to carry

out our mission to ensure lives are safe both at

sea and on land,” says Hand.

“The compliance responsibilities mean that

we are often the regulator as much as the

regulated, and so we have to ensure that the

tools we operate with are very effective, and

that we have the best possible information,”

he says.

The fragmented legacy architecture made it

diffi cult to extract risk assessment information

where it was needed. An assessor often had

information, which could be useful to a

colleague in making a decision, but because

the information was stored locally on a laptop,

rather than automatically in a global data

centre, decisions were being slowed down.

“When the information is needed to ensure

the safety of an activity, the speed with which it

is circulated around the business is of funda-

mental importance to a company’s fi nancial

viability, and the safety of its employees,” says

Hand. “When there are obstacles to the rapid

dissemination of that information, it adds

unnecessary costs and puts the business at risk.”

This also jeopardised the overall reputation of

the organisation. Hand says: “We have the right

to ban ships from sailing if we believe safety

levels are not up to standard, so we cannot be

commercially infl uenced in any way. Equally,

the decision to stop a ship from sailing can have

serious implications for the company that owns

it. That company has the right to expect that we

are working with the best available tools and

have all the relevant risk assessment informa-

tion at our fi ngertips.”

SolutionLloyd’s Register needed a system that could

support its entire portfolio of business, including

maritime, land-based, and management services

operations. The organisation was also looking

for a system that could support its increasingly

mobile workforce and help the business

respond quickly to future regulatory changes.

“We were fairly agnostic about which environ-

ment we took, we simply wanted to make the

right decision,” says King. “Unix appears to lack

a roadmap for the future. We expected Linux

to be signifi cantly cheaper, but not only was

this not the case, because of the tier approach

that we took, it is actually not as versatile as the

Microsoft offerings.”

“We had data centres in 100 of the 234 offi ces. This meant it was

not easy to get data from one system to another. The IT department

supported 62 different models of desktop and laptop, and so support

was taking far more of our time than it should have.”

Daniel King, Head of Architecture, Lloyd’s Register

Business Critical Benefi ts

Lloyd’s Register, the highly-respected provider of safety certifi cates for marine and land-based customers, wanted to standardise its IT archi - tecture, which included more than 100 data centres running on disparate operating and e-mail messaging systems. It also needed to reduce the cost of its IT operations.

Lloyd’s Register evaluated various alternatives including Linux. It chose an integrated Microsoft® stack including Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 with Active Directory® directory service, Windows® XP, and Microsoft Offi ce Professional Enterprise Edition 2003. As a result, IT costs have been cut by a third over 3 years.

Among the key benefi ts from the standardisation are:● Consolidation of servers from 76 to 20.● IT costs reduced by a third with pressure

relieved on help desk.● Flag state information changed in seconds

not days.● Supports an increased move towards

mobile working.

31

King says that because Lloyd’s Register was

receiving educational pricing for Windows, the

capital cost of procurement was comparable

to Linux. “Therefore, we only had to review the

cost of ownership of each and its suitability

to host the applications we currently run and

want to run in the future. Cost of ownership in

2002 came out at around 25 to 30% more using

Linux compared to Windows Server 2003, and

crucially it did not offer the fl exibility to host our

adaptive infrastructure approach.”

The project to unify the technology began in

April 2002, with migration to Active Directory®

directory service completed in October the

same year. Rollout of Windows® XP and

Microsoft Offi ce Professional Enterprise Edition

2003 was completed in June 2003, while the

rollout of Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server took

place between January 2003 and 2004.

“The current project is upgrading from

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server to Microsoft

Exchange Server 2003 to ensure that we can

take advantage of the extensive mobile options

in the latest iteration,” says King. “Exchange

Server 2003 will publish all of our data to the

Web, so it can be accessed directly. At this

point, there is a lot of information being stored

locally on individual computers. The integrated

“ As a result of introducing a unifi ed Microsoft strategy, IT operating

spend has dropped by between 30 and 35% annually over the last

3 years. This not only brings savings to the business, it also adds

to our overall credibility.”

Stephen Hand, Group IT Director, Lloyd’s Register

use of Exchange Server 2003, the 2003 release

of Microsoft Offi ce, and Microsoft Offi ce

InfoPathTM 2003 will deliver a lot of new tools

for our users.

“We have so many data assets, we need

to ensure they are managed and archived

effectively, and Exchange Server 2003 will help

us achieve this. Future legislation is likely to

demand that we have greater access to it, but

the point is to ensure that our staff has access to

what they need to make the right decisions.”

All of the 5,500 users at Lloyd’s Register are

now running Microsoft Offi ce XP Professional

on the desktop and are using a standard range

of hardware provided by HP. Capgemini has

been the outsource partner and has brought its

extensive experience in major re-architecture

projects to bear at Lloyd’s Register.

The company is also using Microsoft Internet

Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004

alongside a selection of third-party vendors to

ensure that security is as effective as possible,

and has been working with Microsoft and

Capgemini to boost its Web services using

Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS)

2003.

The consolidation within the data centre took

an adaptive infrastructure approach, and it was

this that exposed the potential lack of versatility

in Linux, suggests King. Where previously there

had been a point-based approach to hosting

applications on the infrastructure, with a server

being brought in specifi cally for an application,

Lloyd’s Register now defi nes applications

by specifi c patterns, such as 2-tier, 3-tier, or

n-tier server. As a result, the company can now

provision each application tier against sets

of infrastructure that are shared across many

applications.

“Our feasibility studies compared Linux, Unix,

and Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 to de-

termine which environment would be best for

supporting this methodology,” says King. “We

found that Windows Server 2003 presented the

most fl exible approach. With it, we can provi-

sion database tiers based on both Microsoft

SQL ServerTM 2000 Enterprise Edition and

Oracle, our corporate standard database plat-

form. We can host both .NET and J2EE appli-

cations, we can utilise existing hardware, and

we can consolidate this as we wish on a rolling

basis. Windows Server 2003 offered us the most

cost effective approach and was more fl exible

than Linux in this respect.”

32

“The new systems will give us better integration

with third parties in the industry,” says King.

“We are also looking to provide managed

digital internal identity as well as enterprise

active management tools. They will provide us

with a better idea of who is using the systems

and services and ensure that we are integrated

all the way through the service. We can now

get an around-the-clock view of who is using

the service.”

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 is being

used to provide a string of alerting and

trouble-shooting tools. Active Directory is

being extended into the data centre, which is

in the process of being outsourced. Moving

forward, Lloyd’s Register remains committed

to Microsoft products and is in the process of

making bespoke developments in the Microsoft

.NET Framework, an integral component of

Microsoft Windows that provides a program-

ming model and runtime for Web services, Web

applications, and smart client applications.

“We want to build more business support

systems and let our staff drill down further

and get more information, more easily, and

in a more integrated fashion,” says Hand.

“A high proportion of our staff do not work

from an offi ce, so it is imperative that they

have constant access to tools tailored to their

specifi c requirements.”

Benefi tsIT Costs Reduced by One Third

As a result of the work to unify the structure,

and the reduction in servers and licences, Hand

estimates that IT costs have dropped by more

than a third.

“As a result of introducing a unifi ed Microsoft

strategy, IT spend has dropped by between 30

and 35% over the last 3 years,” says Hand. “This

not only brings savings to the business, it also

brings us credibility to keep moving forward.”

The new architecture has helped Lloyd’s Register

continue to assert its relevance in the modern

global economy. Rather than simply being

another regulatory hurdle to companies trying

to carry out their business, the company now

offers a signifi cant collection of information,

which can be used to support decision making.

The benefi ts have also been felt by Lloyd’s

Register’s IT call-centre staff. “Since the new

infrastructure has been put in, the help desk has

seen a signifi cant reduction in the numbers of

calls it receives,” says King. “The types of call are

also changing. People are no longer asking

how to get one system to interact with another,

they are now far more proactive, making sug-

gestions for tools, which will help the business

move forward.”

Number of Servers Reduced from 76 to 20

Lloyd’s Register has realised signifi cant savings

in the number of servers it needs to operate

and maintain. This has reduced the amount

of downtime when information is no longer

available and opened up different collections of

data to one another, bringing the potential for

the company to create more tools.

“Moving to a unifi ed Microsoft architecture has

reduced the servers we run from 76 to 54,” says

King. “Once Exchange Server 2003 is in place,

we will only have to operate 20 servers globally.

We will be able to run multiple applications

over single servers, a feature of Exchange Server

2003, so we can continue to consolidate our

hardware as we grow.”

Coupled with this, King points out that Lloyd’s

Register benefi ts from cost effective develop-

ment skills by using Microsoft. In the main,

the company buys best-of-breed systems for

its activities, only bringing in developers for

very specifi c line-of-business activities. In this

situation Unix-based skills, including Linux

33

developers, are signifi cantly more expensive

than Microsoft.

“It costs 8 times more to run a Unix server than

Windows XP Professional, because the cost of

Unix skills is signifi cantly higher,” he says.

Flag State Information Changed in Seconds

The company’s integrated global data centre

reduces processing time and ensures that

Lloyd’s Register complies with any possible

new regulations that could be introduced.

By ensuring that data is easily available across

the business, it benefi ts from having the most

up-to-date information when decisions are

being made. It also means data is not collected

twice and changes in information are easier

to track.

InfoPath 2003 plays a role here. David Knott,

Chief Technology Offi cer, Lloyd’s Register, says:

“On the marine side, we operate on behalf of

fl ag states. Changing a ship from one fl ag to

another is very complex and used to involve

changing a lot of information manually. We are

using InfoPath 2003, because it lets us apply

rules and keep the look and feel of a Microsoft

Word document, but makes it simple to convert

information on a ship from 1 fl ag to another.

Where it formerly took several days to change

and process a ship’s registration, with InfoPath

2003 it takes seconds.”

Supporting Mobile Working in

Risk Assessment

The nature of Lloyd’s Register’s work has meant

that the drive towards supporting mobile

working by Microsoft and its partners has been

welcomed. Moving to Exchange Server 2003

lets the company make the most of the tools

that are currently available and puts it in a

position to make the most of new ones as

they arrive.

“One of the next projects is to introduce Voice

over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to the working

processes, which should also save us a signifi -

cant amount of money given the amount of

international calls that we make,” says King.

“The benefi ts that being mobile can bring

to the organisation will be signifi cant. The

hardware and services that we are putting

into place will help us move towards an

integrated VoIP infrastructure. As the technol-

ogy becomes more commoditised we will

look to offer more tools.”

Rapid Response to Change

Hand says that the integrated Microsoft

approach lets Lloyd’s Register respond quickly

and effectively to the rapid pace of change in

the industry. “Using Microsoft means that we

simply remove the IT risk, which is consider-

able,” he adds. “We are pushing so much

change and we are fi nding we can optimise

the business processes and support them far

more effectively with the technology that

Microsoft provides.

“Rather than recognising a need and then

having a hiatus as a system is designed and

installed, by which time the business need has

changed, we can recognise and respond to a

need very quickly. Creating an environment

where this is possible while reducing costs by a

third at the same time is very satisfactory.”

The benefi ts of the consolidation work are now

being felt across the business. “The aim of the

overall programme of work was to bring down

IT spending globally to a threshold of 4% of

revenue, from a previous fi gure in excess of 6%,”

says King. “This is now starting to be realised,

and global IT consolidation has been a primary

contributor to this.”

“ We are using InfoPath 2003, because it lets us apply rules and keep

the look and feel of a Microsoft Word document, but makes it simple

to convert information on a ship from one fl ag to another.”

David Knott, Chief Technology Offi cer, Lloyd’s Register

34

35

Capgemini is one of the world’s top fi ve providers of IT solutions and services and a Microsoft® Gold Certifi ed Partner. Founded in 1967, Capgemini provides consulting, technology, and outsourcing services. With headquarters in Paris, the company is one of the world’s leading IT services and consulting companies. For more information about Capgemini products and services visit the Web site at:www.capgemini.com

Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance, an asset-based

lending specialist, offers lending based on all of

a client’s assets, including the value of receivables

and stock held. Its existing technology provided

the functionality users wanted, including a

dashboard of a customer’s position and the

ability to drill down for information, but was

technically very prescriptive and reaching the

limits of its capabilities.

Added to this, replacement parts for the

physical infrastructure were increasingly diffi cult

to fi nd, and the environment itself is likely to

become unsupported in the medium term.

After examining all of the options available,

the company turned to the Microsoft® .NET

Framework to build a new system that offers the

same functionality with superior scalability and

robustness.

SituationLloyds TSB Commercial Finance, part of the

U.K. Lloyds TSB Group, had been using its Client

Account and Management System (CLAS) for its

range of discounted lending activities for over

a decade. The system, based on a Wang server,

was robust, and for some years there had been

no need for signifi cant redesigns or additions

from a user’s point of view.

Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance Introduces New Technology Architecture

CLAS is deeply embedded into the company’s

working practices and manages daily

information from 2,500 customers. “Invoice

discounting accounts for around 50% of our

profi ts, and CLAS is used for everything to do

with that part of the business,” says Paul Jenkins,

Project Manager at Lloyds TSB Commercial

Finance.

“On top of this, it runs the other lending asset

classes that we offer, and monitors collateral

and information that we need to ascertain daily

lending levels.

“Customers provide CLAS with daily information,

which lets them know exactly how much they

can borrow against their assets,” he says. “It also

operates the risk management process, verifi es

the debt, and monitors the top 5 debtors to

ensure that risk is safely distributed.”

While the software may have been robust

and its functionality appreciated within the

user base, a number of problems had arisen.

Of immediate concern was a recent hardware

failure, which highlighted the increasing

diffi culty of obtaining replacement parts.

The understanding that Getronics, the company

that took-over Wang support in the mid-1990’s,

Lloyds TSBwww.lloydstsb.com

Customer Profi leLloyds TSB Commercial Finance is one of the largest providers of asset-based lending in the United Kingdom, offering services across a range of asset classes.

Business SituationAlthough its architecture was popular with customers, regulation, consolidation, and business growth were imposing stresses and strain.

SolutionThe company is using the Microsoft® .NET Framework to emulate the functionality of its current platform, ensuring it retains the tools users appreciate, while adding fl exibility and scalability.

Benefi ts● New system without disruption.● Improved navigation.● Enhanced development capability.● Improved regulatory response.● Removed constraints to growth.

36

was likely to stop supporting the technology

was also a key factor in the decision to change.

Basel II Requirements

Meanwhile, the introduction of the Basel II

regulations required that the company had

a fl exible method of mining data. “We have

to provide better tools for risk management

as a result of Basel II,” says Jenkins. “We were

beginning to have to make compromises in

usability because of CLAS’ lack of fl exibility.”

The industry is also changing. “As the industry

has evolved, specialist organisations have

sprung up, which lend against specifi c asset

classes,” says Jenkins. “Alex Lawrie Factors, Cash

Friday, Lloyds TSB Asset Finance, and Lloyds TSB

Commercial Finance were brought together

as a single organisation because Lloyds TSB

wanted a company that could lend a complete

package to business customers that ranged in

size from £10,000 to £160 million (U.S. $18,032

to U.S. $288.6 million).”

Jenkins says that further specialist businesses

could be added to the organisation, bringing

additional asset classes into the system. The

closed nature of CLAS makes it diffi cult to cater

for new products.

Having systems capable of catering for global

growth was also a challenge because of CLAS’

rigid nature. “This has led to re-keying of data

from incompatible systems, an inherently error

prone activity,” says Jenkins.

SolutionHaving made the decision to develop CLASii,

the second generation of CLAS, Lloyds TSB

Commercial Finance undertook an in-depth

examination of the development options avail-

able. It was decided to use the .NET Framework,

an integral component of Microsoft Windows®

that provides a programming model and

runtime for Web services, Web applications,

and smart client applications.

“We looked at the market and saw that we had 3

alternatives,” says Guy Hurrell, Business Systems

Manager, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance. “We

could develop a new system from scratch, which

would cost a great deal of money, take a long

time, and risk losing the functionality that CLAS

currently provides. Alternatively, we could buy

a system off the shelf, but the cost of customisa-

tion would have been prohibitive.

“In the end, we decided that CLAS’ functionality

is known and liked, so there was no need to

change the core functionality.”

“We have to provide better tools for risk management as a result of

Basel II. We were beginning to have to make compromises in usability

because of CLAS’ lack of fl exibility.”

Paul Jenkins, Project Manager, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance

Business Critical Benefi ts

Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance made a virtue out of necessity by upgrading its IT architecture. It needed to provide better tools for risk management and support compliance with the Basel II Capital Accord. It also wanted to accommodate global growth in its business.

The solution involved creating a new version of its existing proprietary software using the Microsoft® .NET Framework. The new risk management system is being built around Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000, which provides the data management infrastructure for Microsoft Windows Server SystemTM integrated server software.

Among the major benefi ts for the business are:● Increased fl exibility, functionality, and

continuity of data.● No change in current working practices for

staff.● Greater customer satisfaction through more

effi cient service.● Delivers the foundation for further expansion

of the business.

37

alongside the Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET 2003

development system.

CLASii is being delivered in 4 segments, each

being individually load tested for performance.

“There are certain implications of the old

system in the way that we were using it,” says

Hurrell. “We want to ensure that we are not

emulating any data bottlenecks, so we are

carefully testing each phase of the project.”

Benefi tsIncreased Flexibility and Functionality

Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance undertook an

extensive examination of the market before

deciding to redevelop CLAS within the .NET

Framework.

“Developing the system this way means that

we get the best of both worlds: CLASii will

be a familiar system that our users will be able

to work with on day one, but in the long term

the business will enjoy signifi cant benefi ts

from its increased fl exibility and functionality,”

says Hurrell.

“The current Wang system and CLAS appli-

cation are managed entirely in-house,” he adds.

“One of the key benefi ts to us is that develop-

ment resource is more readily available in the

“ The key to this project is that it gives us greater fl exibility

and capacity at a lower cost than the alternatives.”

Guy Hurrell, Business Systems Manager, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance

Microsoft environment, so we are able to make

more signifi cant enhancements as the business

requires. As a result, the business will be able

to capitalise on opportunities that it could not

have taken advantage of in the past.”

Complete New System Without Disruption

One of the key benefi ts of CLASii is that

there will be no change to tried and tested

day-to-day working practices. “Customers will

not notice a difference during the transition to

CLASii, because our managers will have access

to exactly the same tools,” says Hurrell. “We will

be doing this without interruption to customer

facing activities.”

Easier Navigation

While the company’s customers should not

notice any change in service, there will be

instant operational improvements when the

new version goes live.

“It will be signifi cantly easier to navigate,”

says Hurrell. “If a customer contacts our client

service teams and wants information in CLAS,

a manager has to shut what they were doing

and then start from scratch after the customer

is satisfi ed.”

The project to deliver CLASii started in October

2004. Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance is work-

ing with U.S.-based Voyager Systems, an inde-

pendent software vendor that has experience

of similar migrations with competitor platforms.

Because Voyager is a relative newcomer to

the .NET Framework, Lloyds TSB Commercial

Finance also asked Microsoft to play a role in

the development path.

“One of the key problems that we have had

with trying to emulate the original CLAS is

that its age means that there is limited early

documentation to explain how some of the

functions were created,” says Hurrell. “As

a result, we have had to work closely with

Voyager and Microsoft to make sure that

CLASii does not lose any of CLAS’ functionality.

“CLAS does a lot of different things. Users

tend to focus on the top level information that

supports their day-to-day activities, but there is

a lot of data that has to be automatically mined

to populate that top level, and users also have

to be able to drill down when they need to.”

The new system is being built around Microsoft

SQL ServerTM 2000, which provides the data

management and analysis infrastructure for

Windows Server System. This is being used

38

With the new iteration, the manager can

simply minimise a Window, start a second

version of CLASii, give the customer the

information they want, and then carry on

what they were doing originally. It is a simple

thing, but given the depth of information that

the managers have to mine, it should save a

signifi cant amount of time.”

Business Growth

Using the .NET Framework, Lloyds TSB

Commercial Finance is satisfi ed that its infra-

structure will be in a good position to support

future growth. “We are trying to grow the busi-

ness, and the old system was being stretched,”

says Hurrell. “Everything is going to continue

to expand and we are confi dent that we are not

moving to a technology environment that will

stop being supported in the near term.

“We believe that CLASii will help us to react

to changes in expectations, and if enhance-

ments are needed, we will be able to do the

majority of them internally and they will be

delivered quickly.”

While it is unusual to emulate an existing

system in a new environment, Hurrell is satisfi ed

with the approach taken and the progress

made. “The key to this project is that it gives us

greater fl exibility and capacity at a lower cost

than the alternatives,” he says. “This market

is constantly changing and the creation of an

environment that will let us respond to these

changes without losing any functionality helps

us to take advantage of business opportunities

as they present themselves.”

39

New regulations in the mortgage and insurance

industries in the U.K. had a signifi cant effect on

Principality, the largest building society in Wales.

Rather than simply ensuring compliance, the

organisation seized the opportunity to extend

technology across the business and deliver a

host of new online services to customers and

introducing brokers. Using the Microsoft®

.NET Framework, Principality estimates that the

falling cost of technology meant the completely

redesigned system was delivered at 1999

prices, despite the rising cost of specialists and

infl ation. As a result of the project, Principality

became compliant with the CP186 regulations

on deadline, and is now completely self-suffi -

cient in terms of technology updates, helping it

to respond quickly and effectively to regulatory

and customer expectations.

SituationPrincipality has served its members with

mortgage, saving, and insurance services for

over 140 years. The Financial Services Authority

(FSA) in the U.K. introduced regulatory changes

to the mortgage industry at the end of 2004,

enforcing signifi cant amendments to the way

that data is collected and held.

John Williams, Director of IT at Principality, says:

“The CP186 regulations change the way that

Principality Seizes Technology Opportunity in New Mortgage Regulations

mortgages are sold, and the way that we

store and provide information to customers.

There is now a very prescriptive way in which

information must be gathered which has had

a massive impact on the technology that we

use. Similar changes have subsequently affected

our insurance operations.”

As a result of the new regulations, mortgage

customers and their providers now have to fi ll

in a Key Facts Indicator and an Initial Disclosure

Document, which together take signifi cant time

to complete. “The changes are fundamental to

the way that the whole industry does business,

and it was imperative that we were compliant

with the regulations on the fi rst day that they

went live,” says Williams.

The society’s current mortgage delivery system

was effective in the old regulatory environment,

but the introduction of the new regulations

meant that the system needed to be fundamen-

tally reworked.

It was not only customer-facing activities that

were affected. Williams says up to 16 distinct

departments had to amend working practices

as a result of CP186. This meant that the new

system had to take a large number of different

opinions and expectations into account.

Principalitywww.principality.co.uk

Customer Profi lePrincipality is the largest building society in Wales, offering mortgage, insurance, and saving services to a variety of customers.

Business SituationMortgage and insurance regulatory changes require a new approach to the collection and presentation of customer information, creating a need for a new technology infrastructure at Principality.

SolutionUsing the Microsoft® .NET Framework the society met new regulatory requirements while at the same time extending the reach of its technology into new areas of the business.

Benefi ts● Regulatory compliance on time.● Realistic development cost.● Self-suffi ciency.● Improved customer experience.

40

At the same time, Principality recognised it

needed to improve customer service and

product choice, build a unifi ed e-commerce

offering for branches, introducers, and custom-

ers; and also augment its customer relationship

management tools to stay ahead in a fi ercely

competitive industry.

“Principality’s technology only supported the

branch channel,” says Williams. “There was no

technology supporting the e-channel, which

was basically brochure-ware, the call centre,

or the intermediaries, who sell more than half

of the society’s mortgages, but were still

communicating with the society using paper.”

Because of these diverse infl uences, Principality

took the opportunity to signifi cantly scale up its

technology offerings and ensure that it could

respond effectively to any future customer or

regulatory demands.

SolutionGiven the extensive nature of the project,

Principality chose to examine both in-house

and off-the-shelf solutions. The fact, however,

that the CP186 regulations were only in the

process of being introduced, tipped the balance

in favour of working in-house rather than

buying off-the-shelf.

“We looked at the vendor offerings and tested

3 of them, but there were 2 key reasons that

we came to the conclusion it would be better

to build our own,” says Williams. “Firstly, the

vendors had to customise their systems to make

them compliant, so there was no guarantee that

they could work any faster than we could.

“Secondly, they had to support a queue of our

competitors, who also had to have the systems

in place on the same day, which would stretch

the vendor’s support network,” he says.

“Coupled with this, taking an off-the-shelf ap-

proach would simply have introduced a system

with few differences from our competitors’, and

we felt this was a good opportunity to mark

ourselves out from the crowd. We decided that

the quickest and most economical approach

would be to build a system ourselves.”

Principality turned to the .NET Framework, an

integral component of Microsoft Windows®

that provides a programming model and

runtime for Web services, Web applications,

and smart client applications. The society chose

to work with independent service provider CGI.

Williams says this was a good match because

the Microsoft partner’s eBIC e-commerce

framework was highly intuitive and adaptable

to the evolving environment, while CGI was

“ Using the Microsoft .NET Framework, we have met regulatory

changes and signifi cantly enhanced our customer experience.

This has been a complex process, but we have delivered the

system on time and can move forward with confi dence.”

John Williams, Director of IT, Principality

Business Critical Benefi ts

As the largest building society in Wales, Principality has a well-earned reputation for excellence in fi nancial services. The society used the challenge of meeting a major compliance deadline by transforming some of its critical processes, especially the technology supporting its e-channel.

Cost was also an issue. Principality used the Microsoft® .NET Framework to deliver a host of new online services to customers, introducers, and brokers. It was not only customer facing activities that needed reworking. Up to 16 departments needed to change their working practices because of regulatory change.

The .NET Framework helped Principality meet its targets in the following ways:● Compliance with the CP186 regulations

achieved on time.● Redevelopment within 20% of budget despite

the complexity of the project.● Cost savings of 50% by using in-house IT team

instead of outside consultants.● Improved service to key customers and

greater consistency in service.

41

Benefi tsRegulatory Compliance Achieved On Time

The most important element of the project

was that it was delivered on time, ensuring

Principality was compliant with the new

regulations. “It would have been signifi cantly

more diffi cult to do the work had we not used

the latest .NET technology; it would have taken

more resources and the end result would not

have been as good,” says Williams.

“There was no option but to deliver this project

on time, but to have done so while staying

reasonably close to the original budget is very

satisfying. It is clear that the .NET Framework is

a big step forward from a development point

of view.”

Redevelopment Within 20% of Budget

The project was unusual because by its nature

it lacked clear guidelines, but Williams feels

that the costs were realistic given the changing

environment it was introduced into. “We

were faced with a project that was diffi cult to

quantify, involved a vast swathe of the business,

and had little in the way of clarity of delivery.

We did not know how the new regulations

would work in practice, which departments

would need to be involved as the project and

the environment evolved, and when we could

“ Taking an off-the-shelf approach would simply have introduced

a system with few differences from our competitors, and we felt

this was a good opportunity to mark ourselves out from the crowd.

We decided that the quickest and most economical approach

would be to build the system ourselves.”

John Williams, Director of IT, Principality

actually draw a line and say this is the limit of

its remit,” he says.

“As a result, it is diffi cult to ascertain how much

cheaper this approach was, but there are 3

factors which would make taking a vendor ap-

proach more expensive. Firstly, there is the cost

of customisation that a vendor would have had

to make. Secondly, there is the time factor as it

tried to make multiple organisations compliant

with a single delivery day. Finally, there are the

numerous amendments we had to make to the

project as it evolved.”

Williams has experience of redesigning an

entire architecture, having led a similar project

at a different organisation in the same space.

He suggests that the cost of developing the

system using the .NET Framework came out

comparable with the cost of a similar project in

1999: the falling costs of technology negating

infl ation and the rising costs of developers.

“We were within 20% of the budget that we

originally put to the board, which is impressive

given that the project was so big and the core

functionality had to be live from a regulatory

point of view on a specifi c day,” he says.

keen to gain experience applying eBIC to the

.NET Framework.

The solution was built around Microsoft SQL

ServerTM 2000, the Microsoft Visual Basic®

.NET 2003 development system, and the .NET

Framework. Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004

orchestrated the interfaces between legacy

and new Web services to integrate with Unisys

mainframe systems.

“The technology has come on a long way, and

BizTalk Server 2004 is a huge leap forward,” says

Williams. “We hope that Microsoft will continue

developing it from an architecture point of view

because this is a very good technology. The

ultimate hope is that we will move away from

writing code and in future simply defi ne a proc-

ess and the code will be written automatically

into the .NET Framework. The current versions

of the .NET Framework and BizTalk Server 2004

are steps along that path.

“Visual Studio .NET is also a signifi cant improve-

ment,” he says. “The design tools and the

debugging processes are signifi cantly better.

People actually enjoy developing in

this environment.”

42

Development Costs Drop 50%

As a result of adopting the .NET Framework,

Principality can manage updates to its system

internally. “The combination of .NET and

eBIC gives us very fast development times,”

says Williams. “We have brought the whole IT

operation in house because we have developed

the skills we need in the long term.

“All developers were trained in both eBIC and

the .NET Framework, and SQL Server 2000

database skills were also brought in,” Williams

says. “Because the development was done

jointly with CGI, our people learned about the

applications architecture and how the objects

were designed and built. We also had our own

business analysts being mentored by CGI during

the project.”

As a result of the new skills, Williams estimates

that there will be signifi cant cost savings for the

business, because the cost of using in-house

developers is 50% lower than consultants.

The benefi ts are already being felt. In January

2005, Principality managed the fi rst system

update completely independently, even though

it included signifi cant changes to bring it into

line with the FSA’s new insurance regulations.

“The pace of change is likely to be less frenetic

over the next few months, but even at its height

we could manage the work internally,” says

Williams.

Improved Customer Experience

Taking the opportunity of the regulatory

changes to improve the customer experience

has meant that Principality customers are now

benefi ting from a consistency of service that

they did not enjoy previously.

With the .NET Framework in place, Principality

can offer its members and customers products

that are better suited to their needs as soon

as they become apparent. There are currently

over 4,000 different mortgages available to

the British consumer, and making sure that

the society can respond quickly and fl exibly

to changing demands is a signifi cant boost.

“As a result, Microsoft has been very interested

in working with us. We now have a lot more

common ground that we can build on,” says

Williams.

“Using the .NET Framework, we have met

regulatory changes and signifi cantly enhanced

our customer experience,” he adds. “This has

been an extraordinarily complex process, but

we have delivered the system on time and are

in a position to move forward confi dently.”

43

44

Through the use of innovative software,

Microsoft seeks to help banks, capital markets,

and insurance organisations get more from

existing technology investments to better align

with the way technology works and the way

businesses need to run.

Microsoft is committed to delivering tech-

nology solutions that help improve customer,

employee, and operations experience today

while building capacity for continued inno-

vation tomorrow.

44

For More Information

Contents

02 Introduction

06 Cheshire Building Society

10 Citigroup

14 Danske Bank

20 Deutsche Bank

24 Hiscox

30 Lloyd’s Register

36 Lloyds TSB

40 Principality

44 For More Information

For information about Microsoft’s experience in the fi nancial services sector, please visit:

www.microsoft.com/uk/business/fi nancialservices or e-mail the Microsoft U.K. Financial Services team at:

fsindust@microsoft.com

To access information about the Microsoft .NET Framework go to:

www.microsoft.com/net

For information on service orientation and software architectures please visit:

msdn.microsoft.com/architect

To access information about Web services please visit:

msdn.microsoft.com/webservices

For additional customer case studies please visit:

www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies

Delivering BusinessCritical Applications

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This directory is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

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