(LISS powers the powers Beagle Street D2C life insurance platform. Photo credit: Ruth Ellison.)

EXL (New York), a provider of decision-analytics, operation management, outsourcing, business transformation and IT services and vendor of the LifePRO system, announced that it has acquired LISS Systems Limited, a London-based provider of digital customer acquisition and policy administration solutions for the insurance industry.

Used in both the life & pensions and general (P&C) Insurance segments, LISS automates the end-to-end new business process, from quote to underwriting to issuance. LISS’s flagship LISSIA platform includes multi-channel interfaces, underwriting, workflow engines, and document production modules to automate new policy issuance and simplify policy administration.  LISSIA is used for both traditional and unit-linked life and investment products.  Launched in 2002, LISSIA supports installations of more than 1 million policies and supports insurers such as AIG, Aviva and Generali.

“Consumers increasingly prefer using digital channels to purchase insurance, a demographic trend that will require new business models to deliver superior customer experience,” comments Rohit Kapoor, CEO, EXL. “With LISS platforms, insurers can deploy a digital infrastructure to capitalize on direct distribution and straight-through processing. We are extremely impressed with the technological achievements and domain expertise of the company.”

“Together with reinsurance partners, LISS has built a pretty neat underwriting engine targeted at D2C life sales –plus a policy admin system behind it,” comments Jamie MacGregor, London-based SVP of Celent’s (Boston) Insurance practice. “It powers Beagle Street in the U.K. for example—a direct on-line life player that’s focused heavily on simplicity and ease of cover.”

Small and Interesting Client Base

LISS has struggled to promote its solution, according to MacGregor. “They’re a small privately owned firm that comes with all of the problems of scalability, effective marketing support and being able to prove financial strength,” he says.  “They’ve been rumored to be looking for a buyer for a while, and I think EXL will be able to provide them with an answer to many of these challenges.”

“Although LISS is an interesting asset, EXL will need to promote it heavily as it’s not on the shortlist for many providers today owing to its scale/history, so, in some respects, it will be like launching a totally new proposition to the market—as if EXL had invested the money and developed the solutions for themselves,” MacGregor elaborates. “That said, it’s a great place start in that it already has a small but interesting client base—which a fresh solution wouldn’t have.”

Oxford Life Selects EXL LifePRO as Strategic Policy Administration Platform