Technology: A1 Goes Live

In my last article for this newsletter in July 2009 I talked about the planned IT solution implementation that was to be an integral part of our use of technology as an enabler to help serve the poor more effectively and efficiently. Now as I reflect back on an eventful year, I am pleased to say that we are now starting to see the benefits of the deployment of this solution two countries, India and Kenya, with a third implementation (in the Philippines) planned within the next few months.

Low Cost IT Solutions
A key part of MicroEnsure's role of serving the poor through providing low cost insurance products is our function as a provider of back office operations. Every day we are dealing with thousands upon thousands of pieces of information relating to our customers, their policies and any claims that they may have submitted. The volumes of data are too great and the required turnaround of processing too short for these to be managed manually, so we require an effective IT solution that ensures that data can be managed and processed both accurately and quickly, but also at a low cost. As an added challenge the system has to be able to be made available to operate in places where the local technology infrastructure may be quite limited, with poor internet connectivity and unreliable power supplies.

Efficient Data Processing
Our existing branch utility was implemented with a view to addressing some of these challenges of enabling effective data processing in areas of sometimes poor technical infrastructure, but unfortunately did so at the expense of flexibility and ease of use of the system.

The branch utility had been implemented primarily as a data capture tool within our local offices, with data synchronised on a daily basis to our core processing system held in our Denver data centre where detailed data validation and calculation of premium etc were carried out. Whilst this was good from the point of view of ensuring that our data was robust and secure, it did mean that we were not able to be as responsive to any data errors that may not have been identified by data encoders when transcribing information from paper forms. There were other limitations, including the time taken to set up new insurance products, which could range from a few days to a couple of weeks of development time depending on the complexity of the product.

Rethinking Data Management
The new branch utility therefore called for a radical rethink in the way that we manage our data. The biggest change was a shift in the 'source of truth' from the centralised core processing system to the branch utilities. Data is still synchronised to the central system in our data centre from the local country operations on a daily basis, but all the data validation and calculations are carried out at point of data entry in the countries. A sophisticated business rules engine, driven by a third party application from Idiom Software, drives these validations and calculations, resulting in a flexible and parameterised approach to product development. This means that new insurance products can now be implemented in the space of a few hours, rather than days or weeks as previously.

In addition, the fact that data is validated at the point of entry means that any data issues are immediately identified and rectified or noted, rather than staff having to revisit data based on reports from the core system. The new utility also allows for data to be received and uploaded in electronic format, directly from our partner organisations, with the data going through exactly the same business rules validation as for manual data entry.

Future Development
We have further plans for the development of the new utility including integration with mobile payment solutions and a partner portal to enable our partner organisations, such as underwriters and microfinance institutions, to view and update data that is relevant to them, as well as to access comprehensive reports. That is for the future, but the focus now is on deploying the new utility into all of our existing operations so that they can gain the benefits of improved speed to market for products and more effective data management.

Good systems are always able to evolve with the needs of a business, but already we are starting to see the benefits of how the right technology can be used to support our ultimate goal of serving the poor more effectively.