The Co-operative Insurance chose the InsureJ suite in order to streamline its household eBusiness processes and to enhance its customer service through its direct and aggregator web channels. The Co-operative Insurance wanted a solution that could easily wrap around its existing COGEN system, to allow it to retain its existing back office processes.

SSP was chosen for its ability to implement Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) components in an evolutionary process, rather than as a complete replacement. The company's InsureJ suite is able to easily integrate within the existing IT infrastructure and enable The Co-operative Insurance to respond to the changing demands of the marketplace.

David Neave, business leader at The Co-operative Insurance said: "We felt SSP had the right technology, knowledge of the industry and specialist skills to deliver a solution that meets our specific needs which will dovetail neatly with our overall business and technical strategy."

As part of the project, SSP will wrap the InsureJ components as a web layer around The Co-operative Insurance's legacy system in order to support the ongoing expansion of its eBusiness distribution channels for its home insurance business. This will help to increase the number of aggregators available to it and deliver new solutions for its direct online business and its contact centre.

The InsureJ suite will also greatly improve the speed to market for new products - as well as rate and rule changes - whilst also providing valuable management information. In addition, InsureJ will give The Co-operative Insurance the ability to cater for increased volumes of quotations and new business via SSP's fully managed Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Commenting on the deal, Phil Race, director of insurance business at SSP stated: "This is a very exciting project for SSP, and an endorsement of our long term strategy to provide organisations like The Co-operative Insurancsurance with a modular approach to addressing their business objectives. With InsureJ we can empower The Co-operative Insurance to deliver an agile distribution channel within a focused project by applying our 'Enhance & Evolve' philosophy of wrapping new components around existing legacy applications to deliver real benefit."

Chairman of SSP, David Rasche added: "This is the third project for SSP with InsureJ and the first in Europe. This agreement provides further evidence that our InsureJ suite is really something special and that it has made the transition from an innovative solution with potential, to one that is endorsed as a mission critical application by the top tier of the insurance marketplace. We are delighted to welcome The Co-operative Insurance as a client."