Pioneering E-Insurance with The Superinsure Insurance Automation System
By adopting an e-business model, World Power has been able to expand into the consumer insurance sector, strengthen its corporate businesses while reducing sales and operational costs.

• Expand customer base and capture new revenue opportunities
• Improve effectiveness of existing corporate sales
• Reduce operational cost and improve efficiency in administrating insurance policies
• Enhance customer service by becoming more responsive to customers' needs and more proactive

The Client
World Power Insurance Consultants Limited is a well-established insurance brokerage firm under the Professional Insurance Broker Association (PIBA). World Power offers programs for all types of insurance for corporations and construction companies. Its clientele include property developers, contractors, government bodies and project financiers. Its range of services has enabled World Power to strengthen its market positioning, and this has benefited their clients when they negotiate insurance programs and claims on their behalf.

The Business Challenge
With over 300 insurance brokers in Hong Kong, insurance brokerage is an extremely competitive industry. While World Power provides specialist services to a niche market, it must continue to expand its service offerings in order to give clients a "one-stop-shop" for business insurance services. To stay competitive, World Power also strives to keep the sales and administrative costs down. At the same time, the consumer insurance sector represents a vast potential market for World Power. Yet it is not cost justifiable to tap into this sector using the traditional agent and telesales model.

World Power decided to start e-business because it gives them two strategic advantages. Firstly, e-business allows World Power to grow its business-to-business insurance sales by making use of more effective communications media such as the Internet. Secondly, it gives them a venue to enter into the consumer insurance sector without having to invest heavily in human resources and costly administration.

The process
Internad started working with World Power back in 1997 when Mr. Peter Yen, World Power's Managing Director, concluded that automation was the way to expand their business while reducing operational costs. With Peter's help, Internad completed a thorough study of World Power's operation and learnt about the insurance business. At the same time, Internad began drafting the blueprint for the new system, designing the data model, key functions and interfaces of the new system.

All servers are Intel processor-based servers

The entire project was completed in three stages.

• During the first stage, a working prototype was built as both the backend database and the client front end. Although the prototype was adequate for "proof of concept", it could not handle a full scale rollout to every staff with a large customer and transaction database.

• During the second stage, we built the production version of the system using a client server architecture. After successfully stress testing with real data, the system was rolled out to World Power's management, sales and administration staff.

• The final stage of the development was to add the e-commerce component, which included a web server, the on-line transaction logic and customer web access front end.

"Internad has done an excellent job for World Power. They spent considerable effort in understanding our business and our needs. Their IT staff are professional and knowledgeable. More importantly, their management contributed innovative ideas and helped map out our e-business strategy. We see Internad as our technology partner who will continue to help expand our e-business and maintain our competitive edge in the future," Mr. Peter Yen, Managing Director, World Power Insurance Consultants Limited.

The Result
As a result of implementing the insurance automation system, World Power has been able to handle more businesses without increasing the number of staff. With functions such as automatic fax and e-mail reminders for policy renewal, customers receive better services while World Power reduces its administrative efforts. Since launching the on-line insurance web site, World Power has successfully sold its Mortgagee 888 insurance package directly on-line at an unexpectedly high growth rate. At the same time, the web site also attracted a significant number of leads for other types of insurance services, such as motor and life.

World Power Insurance uses Intel processor-based servers
	www.intel.com/ebusiness