Fineos signs deal with US claims company


12 Feb 2003

Irish software solutions provider Fineos has inked a major deal with US claims management company, Core Inc.

Core – third party administrators managing disability insurance programmes for US companies – has integrated Fineos’s Disability Claims Manager with its existing WorkAbility Online Absence Management application to enhance its end-to-end claims management process.

Core is a subsidiary of Fortis Inc, a financial services operation involved in a number of speciality insurance market segments.

Fortis already has a separate deal with Fineos to use the system, which was developed during consultation between the two companies – Fortis was involved in the development of a prototype version in February of last year.

The deal represents efforts by Fineos to break into the North American market.

Spokesman for Fineos, Jason O’Connor told siliconrepublic.com that the US market has been growing for the company over the last year and a half and said he expected it to grow exponentially over the next year.

Fineos has also sold Disability Claims Manager to Delta Lloyd in the Netherlands.

Of Core’s 300 clients, 60 are Fortune 500 companies, including Apple, Daimler Chrysler, General Electric and Motorola.

Fineos says that Disability Claims Manager acts as a central application to effectively manage and streamline Core’s WorkAbility Division claims process.

A spokesman said: “By fully automating all relationship, contact and workflow management, the system co-ordinates and manages the various parties in the claims process and enables claims personnel to access customer, policy and involved-party information in real-time whether a claim is made via the internet, telephone letter or email.”

Managing director of Core’s workability division, Jay Menario, said: “By delivering an integrated seamless claims management process across our business, the Fineos system will enable us to significantly reduce our costs while allowing us to service claims in a much shorter space of time.”

Leo Corcoran, senior vice-president for business development for Fineos in North America, said: “To have secured our second North American customer in such a short time is a great achievement.”

The company would not disclose the value of the deal.

Fineos last month inked a deal with the EBS to implement customer relationship management and business process automation product solution, Fineos Front Office.

The EBS deal represented the company’s first foray into the banking and building society sector in Ireland – until then the company had focused on the insurance sector, although it had deals with several banks and building societies across Europe. These include Abbey National, Britannia, Legal and General, Skandia, Allianz and Zurich Financial Services.

By Suzanne Byrne