FICO today announced that South African insurer Lion of Africa will use FICO decision management technology in underwriting new personal lines policies to reduce costs and put more competitive offers into the market faster. The insurer will use the industry-leading FICO® Blaze Advisor® business rules management system to create, modify, test and monitor underwriting decisions across its business, eliminating the cost and effort of supporting several different rating engines.
Lion of Africa is one of South Africa’s leading short-term insurers, operating in the commercial and personal lines market segments with a range of specialist insurance products. The firm covers many of the Top 100 JSE listed companies, and is also the largest insurer to the local authorities sector. Based in Johannesburg, Lion of Africa also has offices in Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban.
“At Lion of Africa Insurance, we pride ourselves on providing simple and effective business solutions for each individual,” said Jonathan Holden, executive of operations at Lion of Africa. “With FICO’s superior business rules technology, our entire underwriting team will have the flexibility and control to meet each customer’s needs swiftly. Using FICO Blaze Advisor, we can also easily simulate the impacts of new underwriting guidelines on our book of business, and provide complete transparency to internal auditors and insurance regulators. We also chose Blaze Advisor because it streamlines deployment of predictive models, adding another dimension of decision insight to Lion of Africa’s capabilities. With rules, predictive analytics and the addition of third-party data, Lion of Africa will significantly improve on existing fraud detection, prevention and conversion capabilities.”
“FICO Blaze Advisor will help Lion of Africa advance its vision for a thoroughly connected and customer-centric insurance operation,” said Robin Findlay, who directs FICO’s operations in Africa and the Middle East. “While initially they will use FICO Blaze Advisor for personal lines underwriting, it is powerful enough to be extended in the future across several areas of their business.”
“By using advanced decision management in their underwriting, Lion of Africa are moving to the first rank of technology-driven insurers in this region,” said Gray Stopforth, Head of Sales at PIC Solutions, a FICO partner in South Africa that brokered the sale and will support Lion of Africa’s use of FICO Blaze Advisor. “FICO and PIC are working together to introduce the newest technologies and best practices from around the world to insurers in South Africa.”
PIC initially engaged with Lion of Africa in terms of enhancing their existing counter-fraud capabilities within both Claims and Underwriting and is currently in the process of developing an infrastructure and framework for the future; one which demonstrates Lion of Africa’s proactive stance in the fight against fraud.
FICO® Blaze Advisor® business rules management system is the world's leading business rules system for managing complex decisions. Blaze Advisor provides companies across industries with a scalable solution that delivers unprecedented agility, consistency and business control. FICO Blaze Advisor is widely used in the insurance industry worldwide, and is also the rules engine within FICO’s industry-leading applications for decision management.
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