ILOG JRules is used as part of its service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiative for a wide range of insurance processes, one of which is new product development. In using ILOG BRMS, Hiscox will be able to easily test and create new insurance products, rates and risk classification tiers much faster.

A FTSE 250 company with offices in thirteen countries and customers around the world, Hiscox is a leader in specialist insurance and covers a wide range of personal and commercial customers that are considered either too complex or risky for more general insurers. Hiscox is Europe's foremost fine art insurer and the world's largest provider of kidnap and ransom insurance by premium income.

When looking to improve their systems, Hiscox had three main objectives. First, Hiscox wanted to be able to add new distribution channels as quickly as possible. Second, the company wanted to reduce the time and cost associated with both making changes to existing products and bringing new products to the market. Finally, Hiscox needed to increase the ability of underwriters and business analysts to make changes to rules directly without having to change complex system logic, allowing the company to improve its business response time.

ILOG's BRMS has been used to enhance a number of in-house IT systems, which were not sufficiently flexible to meet Hiscox's long-term business objectives. Prior to ILOG JRules implementation, it took Hiscox more than six months to launch new products. Soon, business rules will be exposed as decision services and reused across different channels so that regardless of where the transaction comes from, the applicable set of business rules are enforced for greater consistency, transparency and speed. As a result, the time-to-market for new products is expected to dramatically improve, enabling Hiscox to achieve speed-to-market gains of over 50 percent. As far as underwriters are concerned, they will have the ability to manage the rules and rates implemented for each scheme themselves and perform 'what if' scenarios to see the impact of a new rate or risk change on the overall process or book of business. Finally, the BRMS will enable the introduction of Web-based dynamic questioning of customers which means that specific needs can be identified and priced automatically.

"Our aim is to provide a personal service to our customers while also making the most of technology in order to keep costs down," said Alan Millard, Chief Operating Officer at Hiscox. "For us, managing costs is as important as managing risk if we are to remain competitive on premiums. ILOG will allow us to introduce efficiencies into our operations and the rules system provides the necessary flexibility to maintain our unique position."