{"id":1432,"date":"2011-12-09T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/diligenta-friendslife-120911\/"},"modified":"2011-12-09T09:30:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T09:30:00","slug":"diligenta-friendslife-120911","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/diligenta-friendslife-120911\/","title":{"rendered":"It may be for life, but will there be innovation, as TCS inks the mother of all insurance BPO deals"},"content":{"rendered":"
For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, until many missed SLAs do us part.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Imagine committing to someone for 15 years? \u00a0Most marriages are long-divorced by that stage, companies rise and fall, entire countries are created, invaded and may even go bankrupt…<\/em><\/p>\n So how about standardizing life assurance and pension policies for said period, which is exactly what TCS’ insurance services delivery subsidiary, Diligenta, has become wedded to in a 15-year, $2.2bn, 1900 employee marital partnership<\/a> with the UK’s Friends Life. This represents the largest life and pensions BPO engagement by a considerable margin, eclipsing the\u00a0$1.1bn Prudential contract awarded to Capita in 2007.<\/p>\n At HfS, we believe this move from TCS signals a sea-change in the industry with regards to the growth strategies and ambitions of the leading BPO providers. \u00a0Simply put, they are no longer keen to acquire each other, and see much more value ingesting large clients with domain and technology value.\u00a0Taking on new clients, even at low-margins, is simply less risky from an investment perspective, and the value from developing on-shore domain capability and delivery platforms far outweighs absorbing all the unwanted mess you get when you take out competitors.<\/p>\n The BPO Holy Grail is no longer all about scale – it’s also about removing as many manual elements from processes as possible<\/span><\/p>\n We’ve been rambling on a lot about Business Platforms<\/a> of late, and we see this engagement as a genuine move by a provider to develop one that dominates the UK insurance sector. \u00a0So let’s keep this simple – the other day I made an electronic payment to one of our suppliers. \u00a0Once the payment was completed, I had generously opted to pay the $25 transaction fee at my end for sending<\/em> an “international payment” (even though it was all made in US dollars). \u00a0Still wallowing in the\u00a0pleasant\u00a0thoughts about what a nice generous person I was, the next day I received a phone call from said supplier complaining that he had been subjected to a $35 fee from his<\/em> bank for receiving<\/em> the payment. \u00a0“Dude, we’re in the wrong business”, was the conversation that ensued.<\/p>\n Essentially, retail banks are making obscene sums of money from business process transactions that actually entail virtually no human interaction. In this example, both our banks had developed sophisticated Cloud-based transaction systems, and the only human labor costs they were incurring (associated with electronic payments) involved offshore support services to take the odd tech support call, if we couldn’t figure out how to use their online service.<\/p>\n It’s the same with insurance, where the vast majority of processes are standard, high in frequency, completely administrative and commidotizable. \u00a0Applying for a policy can also be\u00a0completely\u00a0automated, based on the applicant’s details (i.e. age, location, previous claims history, desired coverage etc), and so can the claims process, where only occasional human intervention may be required – i.e. making a complex adjudication, occasional routine audits, taking a customer support call etc.<\/p>\n The kernel of this issue is that once the BPO provider has developed a Business Platform that removes much of manual process requirements and can be Cloud-based (i.e. no on-premise software or hardware), their insurance clients can focus their competitive differentiation investments on more subtle nuances – and in many cases it’s purely down to who can deliver their services at the lowest cost, with the most attractive service benefits and the smartest advertising strategy. Essentially, the more automated the process can become, with the least amount of associated labor and IT infrastructure costs, the more competitive<\/em> the BPO provider can be with its pricing, and the more competitive the insurance client can become, having more resources to focus on better marketing and service differentiation.<\/p>\n So, without further ado, let’s discuss the ins and outs of this strategy:<\/em><\/p>\n Positives of the engagement<\/span><\/p>\n Absorbing operations from services clients is a lot less expensive and (often) less messy that\u00a0acquiring\u00a0other providers. \u00a0<\/strong>Taking on\u00a0expensive back office operations is nothing new to TCS, as many recall their $500m punt<\/a> on Citigroup’s Indian captive just as the last financial crisis was exploding. Clearly, TCS sees more long-term value in absorbing industry-specific scale and capability, than simply acquiring other service providers outright. \u00a0For example, another play could have been acquiring EXL service, the much-courted, but expensively-valued, service provider with good capability and reputation for servicing insurance companies globally. \u00a0However, that strategy would have involved either a billion-dollar outlay or a lot of stock changing hands. \u00a0The Friends Life deal brings to TCS a lot more onshore delivery\u00a0capability, does not require anything near the initial financial outlay, and given them a predictable path for the future in terms blowing Capita out of the UK\u00a0insurance\u00a0sector. \u00a0At worst, the deal will be neutral to mildy-profitable over the next few years, and doesn’t create a huge hole in TCS’s cash-laden warchest, which it may choose to open if we do hit another recession and some bargain acquisitions appear.<\/p>\n