Insurance company Prudential is suing IT supplier Unisys for millions of pounds in damages as a result of a failed computer project, according to a report in UK industry paper Computer Weekly.
The report says that Prudential Europe Management Services, Prudential Services and Prudential Jersey are seeking more than £12m in damages from Unisys after the alleged failure of a project dubbed "Unite" which was crucial to Prudential's European expansion strategy.
Unite was based on the Unisure software package supplied by Unisys, states the paper, and was intended to give Prudential agents in Europe the ability to process orders for new policies and pensions via the Internet in near real-time.
Computer Weekly says the termination of the project in September last year left Prudential having to enact a contingency plan and rely on its ageing legacy applications. This involved manual processing of policies while it built new systems in-house.
The High Court action has been launched by Prudential in a bid to recover some of the £12 million expenses it allegedly incurred over the course of the project.
Prudential and Unisys declined to comment.