IBM and Majesco form five-year partnership to accelerate new global insurance services

Technology company IBM announced on Monday a five-year partnership with Majesco – a global provider of core insurance software, consulting and services for insurance business transformation – to jointly offer a new cognitive, cloud-based platform to help insurance carriers worldwide create new services on IBM Cloud.

The global partnership is intended to help provide clients with the ability to speed the development of new customer services with predictive data analytics for insurance providers to bring new solutions to their clients, IBM said in a statement.

The partnership also becomes the first in what is expected to be a wave of industry partnerships under IBM’s recently announced Industry Platforms business, the statement said. The new unit was formed to build “open industry platforms and the first comprehensive ‘as a service’ solutions designed from the ground up for individual industries.”

“The joint IBM and Majesco offering will also provide a secure, global incubator for insurance companies to develop and launch new cognitive products and services via the cloud for clients,” IBM reported.

Majesco operates in eight countries in all regions of the world, including North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia. It will contribute advanced software to this offering for property and casualty insurance, general liability insurance, life, annuity, pensions and insurance that improves speed to market, customer retention and business processes while responding to regulatory changes.

IBM will contribute IBM Watson – a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learned to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data – and other cognitive application programming interfaces that will run on IBM Cloud. “This will allow insurance companies to better analyze, price and understand business risks using new data sources and add an engaging and personalized advisory interface to their services,” the statement said.

IBM noted that the insurance industry is facing “multiple forces of change,” including rapid digitization, changing demographics, rising customer expectations, challenging economic environment and expanding risk of sophisticated fraud. “The integration of IBM Cloud and cognitive capabilities with Majesco’s market-leading core system for policy, billing and claims will allow for new, innovative products and services for insurers,” said Ketan Mehta, Majesco’s CEO and co-founder, in the statement. “This partnership underscores our commitment to accelerate new business services to our clients by providing them technology to transform their insurance business models.”

IBM Watson and other cognitive capabilities will also provide insurance underwriters and actuaries with improved insights into both customer and external data to help reduce risks from claim fraud, consolidate and streamline processes to improve pricing and increase the efficiency of underwriters. “These advances can help to ultimately drive a more competitive insurance marketplace.”

Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president of IBM Industry Platforms, said in the statement that IBM is making a “strategic shift to unlock new value for clients through platform solutions – industry by industry – that combine IBM Cloud, our cognitive capabilities, new offerings we’re building and the specialized capabilities of ecosystems providers.” She added: “Our insurance clients are facing huge pressures to modernize their business models, keep pace with the explosion of data, transactions, regulatory requirements and new expectations for the experience of individuals. This partnership with Majesco will accelerate their digital transformations and allow them to discover new insight in the data flowing through their existing processes.”

IBM reported that its global cloud data centre presence includes nearly 50 secure and highly scalable IBM Cloud data centres in 18 countries on six continents. The company delivers enterprise cloud services ranging from analytics and Watson to blockchain and the Internet of Things to “provide clients with more choice and flexibility in their digital transformation.”