The pressure on insurers is more intense than ever, with highly competitive markets and an increasingly demanding regulatory regime, driven by Sarbanes-Oxley and the FSA. Insurance companies are striving to improve customer focus and meet the heightened reporting requirements. Xchanging's service-oriented technology architecture is a method of building business processes through the linking together of a number of related services into a comprehensive business solution. This approach allows Genius to be rapidly adapted to the new regulatory environment and readily tailored to facilitate new business opportunities.

Genius is based on over 15 years of investment and provides business processing to over 50 customers, deployed in 30 countries. Xchanging will improve upon this class-leading business functionality by deploying Genius on a Microsoft .NET platform, making it relevant to a wider community of insurance users.

Gordon Ejsmond-Frey, EMEA insurance industry manager at Microsoft, said, "This is a fantastic commitment by Xchanging to Microsoft's technologies. By combining Xchanging's deep expertise in the insurance industry with Microsoft's proven technologies, we can offer insurers flexible, open solutions for all of their processing needs, allowing them to grow their business and meet regulatory requirements."

Modern insurance companies now demand increased levels of service and flexibility and Genius is being enhanced to exceed these requirements. Xchanging will future-proof existing customers' investment and give them a choice of web services architectures in the future.

David Andrews, Chief Executive Officer of Xchanging, said, "Genius is already used by 70 insurers in 23 countries. So, we are taking what is already recognised as a world-class solution, extending functionality, partnering with Microsoft and modernising the technology to make Genius the best global straight-through processing answer for the general insurance sector."