CSC Offers Insurance Suite to Aviva Insurance

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) recently licensed its Integral insurance suite to Aviva India. Aviva India, an arm of U.K.-based Aviva Group, is in the business of life insurance in association with Dabur Group (an Indian healthcare product manufacturer). Though the financial details of the deal were kept confidential, Integral is one of Computer Sciences' comprehensive administration suites for life insurance and annuities/pensions, property and casualty/general insurance and group insurance.

The software provides end-to-end policy/group management, product configuration and business analytics solutions. With Integral, Aviva India will replace its legacy insurance administrative system and boost its performance across branches. The software will allow Aviva to learn more about changing client preferences, market its new products, and serve clients better, which will result in market share growth. The implementation, customization, training and testing of the software system will take roughly a year.

Insurance plays a vital role in providing a sense of security to people. With economic recovery underway, people are again looking to put their money into innovative life and annuity products in order to improve their chances of financial security. Insurance carriers are trying to tap this demand through their new life and annuity policies.

Integral software provides necessary assistance for launching new products in the market. This explains the increasing adoption of the software amongst insurance carriers. According to Computer Sciences, Integral has been adopted by 200 firms across 40 countries.

Also, Integral is now available on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2. The technological agreement between the two took place in October 2011. Research carried out by Microsoft officials shows that banks and carriers are rapidly adopting Windows and SQL servers across the information technology system to update legacy platforms. The trend suggests that this new venture will not only be beneficial to the insurance sector, but also to Computer Sciences and Microsoft.

Deal wins are catalysts for any company and Computer Sciences has no dearth of them. But uncertainty regarding the U.K. National Health Service contract, intense competition in the IT and cloud computing space from both small and big players such as Accenture plc (ACN - Snapshot Report) and Hewlett-Packard Company, its European exposure and strained federal budgets are concerns. Despite this, we are positive on the company given its first quarter earnings beat and bookings growth. Currently, Computer Sciences Corporation holds a Zacks #2 Rank (implying a short-term Buy rating).