Northern Star Leads The Way In Back-Office Claims Processing With LAVA Systems

Toronto, ON - 1998-03-04 - Northern Star Insurance (NSI), part of the US$7,444 million gross premium Italian insurance group, Generali, has teamed up with LAVA Systems (Europe), Ltd. to create an innovative back-office claims processing solution for NSI s Gloucester-based Motor and Household insurance operations. LAVA Systems won NSI s tender against stiff competition from IBM, Filenet and Xerox. The contract is to provide an initial 50-seat turnkey solution for CAN$525,000, excluding hardware.

Originally designed to integrate with NSI s Continuum Cogen insurance system, running on an IBM mainframe, NSI decided, subsequent to tender award, to upgrade its systems to Total Systems' Ultima application on the IBM RS6000. LAVA s open architecture allowed NSI ample flexibility to make this move, while retaining the full functionality of the original document management and workflow solution. The solution will cater to NSI s new platform, Ultima, as well as Continuum Cogen and VSE legacy systems.

"LAVA has been very supportive of our business goals and has shown an impressive degree of flexibility, both commercially and technically", stated Nick Gunter, NSI s Executive Manager of Claims. Commenting on the choice of LAVA Systems, Mr.Gunter added: "We were keen to team up with a company with extensive insurance experience. The fact that LAVA has developed a set of standard workflows for insurance operations will mean that the project can be completed in less time and, therefore, in a more cost effective manner."

Robert Terry, Senior Vice-president, Managing Director, LAVA Systems (Europe Ltd.), commented: "Our standard document enabled application for the insurance industry has once again proved a winner. We are particularly pleased to have won this contract as it underlines our credentials in the household insurance sector, complementing our record of success in motor claims. From our discussions with Northern Star we are confident that, following a successful implementation, we will have demonstrated the benefits of our technology to the whole of the Generali Group."

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