FINEOS Joins IBM's ISV Advantage Initiative to Deliver Claims Solutions to Help SMB Customers in Financial Industries

March 10, 2004 - Dublin, London, Amsterdam – FINEOS Corporation, a leading innovator of insurance and banking software, has joined IBM's ISV Advantage Initiative. This is a program designed to provide independent software vendors (ISVs) with technical and marketing support to help meet the specific information technology (IT) needs of small and medium businesses (SMB) in Ireland, UK, Netherlands, and South Africa. Under the program, FINEOS will work closely with IBM on co-marketing and sales activities for the FINEOS Insure Claims Manager solution, targeting insurance providers in these markets.

FINEOS Insure provides insurance companies with a central application for effectively managing personal injury, motor, property and healthcare claims, and is specifically designed to streamline the manual costs associated with processing these claims. By combining multi-channel claims intake and business process automation with case management, document management and relationship management components, the system aims to reduce the amount of time and money spent on processing claims while, at the same time, increasing customer satisfaction.

The FINEOS system allows insurers to address a number of key challenges faced in claims management, particularly around improving risk assumption and pricing, reducing leakage, staff turnover, and operating costs. In these areas, FINEOS customer statements confirm that customers can expect to cut claims cycle times by 40%, reduce claims administration costs by 15%, annually, in addition to decreasing annual reserves through tighter claims management processes by 1%.

"Given the tough operating environment for insurance, we believe that companies have to renew their focus around claims operational efficiency," says Kem Ferag, Client Executive & Sales Leader, ISV and Developer Relations, IBM. "FINEOS Insure is a powerful solution that can provide the basis for this business model as it will integrate every customer and intermediary touch point with back office information so your claims, sales and service personnel can maximize every revenue opportunity and deliver the best possible service."

"Effective claims management is a major issue in the insurance industry as this process ensures large cost savings, allowing insurance companies to become more competitive and responsive to their customer needs", said Joe Flynn, Global Sales and Marketing Director, FINEOS. "Together, IBM and FINEOS are focused on providing business solutions that deliver these benefits in a way that addresses the wide range of customer needs and preferences with a demonstrated return on investment."

Michael Kelly, CEO of FINEOS also commented: "Both IBM and FINEOS already have a long history of working successfully together in the financial services sector, where FINEOS has a proven track record for implementing IBM products in several of its customer sites. These include key IBM technologies such as WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Portal Server, MQ Series, and DB2. More recently, FINEOS has also worked with IBM Business Consulting Services on a number of business transformation projects."

ISV Advantage is administered by 'PartnerWorld for Developers', the developer resource for IBM Business Partners. It is a worldwide program designed to help software developers reach broader markets, lower their costs of doing business, and take their products to market faster. For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld.