Fortis Life UK selected Portrait Software to support the new business and underwriting process streamlining approvals and providing insight into the underlying business performance. The three year contract, was awarded to Portrait due to their products’ proven capability in this area.

Fortis Life UK is a new UK based life insurer offering protection products initially through a small number of specialist protection distributors. This new business is owned by Fortis, which has a presence in over 50 countries and has identified a number of opportunities to build on its already successful UK general insurance business.

“We are a new entrant looking to make a significant impact in an already crowded life protection industry. A key differentiator will be our new technology capability,” said Martin Werth, MD, Fortis Life UK. “The quality of our proposition was critical to Fortis and the Portrait Solution has enabled us to both achieve this and shorten our implementation” he added.

The impact of Fortis’ new technology will be most apparent for new business applications, where Fortis aims to streamline the underwriting process by putting business on risk more quickly to reduce distributor costs and ultimately improve the end customer experience.

Portrait Software is providing an enterprise-wide licence to support the launch of the business in July 2008. Portrait Foundation, which provides the ability to prioritise rules, processes, communications and workflow, and Portrait Customer Analytics, which analyses customer, operational and risk data, will be at the heart of the solution.

Werth further commented “With exemplary customer service a key to the success of Fortis Life we are delighted to have Portrait help us achieve that. The software provides us with end-to-end process transparency, traceability and reporting, which will enable us to reduce bottlenecks and prevent sales leakage. Furthermore the software provides information on sales performance and gives insight on risk data which will enable us to improve processes and manage resources.”

The project has been implemented over recent months with ‘go-live’ scheduled in tandem with the launch of the new business.

Nick Randall, CEO of Portrait Software commented, “We are delighted that Portrait has been selected by Fortis Life UK. The flexibility of the applications allows easy integration with existing systems and, being fully auditable, enforces guidelines, policies and compliance enabling Fortis to respond to customers more fairly and effectively. Our expertise in this market sector, together with the power of the technology, will enable Fortis to stay competitive in a tightening market.”