CASE STUDY: Modernization of NTUC Income

CASE STUDY: Modernization of NTUC Income?

1.)

What were the problems faced by Income in this case? How were the problems solved by thenew digital system?

Income·s insurance processes were very tedious and paper-based. This resulted to humongousIncome also experienced frequent breakdown of the HP 3000 mainframe which hosted the coreinsurance applications and the accounting and management information systems. In addition tothis, HP 3000 back-up system only allowed restoration to the previous day·s back-up data.Hardware failures caused six days of complete downtime. COBOL programs also encounteredfrequent breakdowns that halted the systems and caused temporary interruptions. At the sametime, development of new products using the COBOL is quite cumbersome and took weeks, evenmonths, to accomplish. They also lost opportunities to cross-sell because transaction processingfor policy underwriting was still a batch process and information is not available to agents andadvisors in real-time. Through the new digital systems, these problems were addressed.

The paper-based insurance processes were replaced by a paperless platform. Under the new system, alldocuments are scanned and stored on ´trustedµ storage devices. Frequent breakdowns wereaddressed by the high-availability platform. Multiple servers are hosted and connected to morecommunication lines that are ´load balancedµ. The new system also addressed downtimes dueto breakdowns by its hot back-up disaster-recovery centers. The new digital system alsoaddressed the slow development of new products by COBOL through the straight throughprocessing workflow capabilities of the new system.

2

.)

What types of information systems and business processes were used by Income before migratingto the fully digital system?

The insurance process of Income was very manual and paper/file intensive. Filled-up applicationforms of clients were sent by agents through courier. Their collection schedule causes delays oftwo to three days. The Office Services log, sort, and send documents to underwriting. Proposalswere allocated to staff randomly. No system was in...