LIC gearing up to give tough fight to private insurers. Know how

Time is ripe for Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) to go for a technology upgradation plan! To compete with private players, the state-run insurer will rely on technology upgradation. This includes handling documents, speed up policy writing, setting up of a call centre and purchase of iPads, as revealed in an Economic Times report.

To achieve tech upgradation, the country's largest insurer has invited tenders. "The idea is to improve services. Our technology needed to scale up at the same level as our growth and we needed a faster turnaround time," an executive with LIC's information technology department told the financial daily.

He further said: "This is not just a consumer-facing revamp but even internal IT is being upgraded."

The executive, who did not wish to be named, said that LIC is working with consultancy firm Ernst & Young (EY) to spearhead its technology change, and the cost of buying new technology, all upgrades and running the systems would be a few hundred crore rupees.

The plan for the insurance giant's technology transformation is charted in the tenders. In August, LIC put out a tender to buy 590 iPads. And later in December, it came out with two tenders. Firstly, to create a new e-mail archival system that could support 200,000 email accounts; and second one was to virtualise about 125,000 desktops and laptops.

In February this year, LIC put out a tender for two-factor authentication on desktops, including fingerprint scanners. The insurer said, it planned to buy about 100,000 fingerprint scanners in a phased manner. Other tenders issued this year include one to modernise enterprise document management system— used to process policies — and creation of a call centre.

According to LIC's tenders, companies such as Tech Mahindra and TCS to Microsoft and Oracle have taken part in the pre-bid discussion meetings.

"LIC's scope of technology upgrade is huge. They started with infrastructure - with desktop virtualization— and are now moving to applications. The idea is that they also have to be attractive to the high-net worth individuals who are more profitable customers," Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief executive and analyst at Greyhound Research, told the financial daily.

Gogia added that private insurers already use tablet-based software to improve.

LIC is not the only state-owned enterprise loosening its pursestrings. Air India is also beginning to make investments in IT and is exploring tablet-based software offering for its pilots and crew, ET had reported earlier this week.
(Image: Indiatimes)