PolicyLink, a trader in the Traded Policy Market, with a local Cape Town office since June this year, has implemented IBM Netfinity servers with maintenance and technical support performed by I-Fusion.
In an effort to increase the size of its market, PolicyLink Australia identified South Africa as a potential growth area. PolicyLink operates as a broker between individuals interested in selling their policies and Institutional Investors that securitise and manage the wholesale fund. Product providers such as RMB Financial Services then provide a retail Traded Policy Investment to investors. The PolicyLink Option provides a higher payment for surrendering policyholders and a unique investment for investors.
Mark Ringstrand, IT manager at PolicyLink, says: "We are a people company first. Several players in the secondary market in South Africa have operated on an unethical basis which has resulted in the market being perceived as being run by sharks. PolicyLink`s focus is to provide a "fair deal" for all parties in the transaction."
PolicyLink operates a call centre with full time customer service staff who are trained to answer questions on the secondary market and about PolicyLink.
To accomplish the back office task of trading the policies PolicyLink first established relationships with the major local life insurance companies and financial institutions, followed by the implementation of a proprietary trading system.
"The trading system was developed by in-house actuaries who took a scientific approach to assessing the value of a policy. The core system was built in MS Access," says Ringstrand, "and is being continually updated. The new versions of the trading system is being moved to Visual Basic and SQL Server, allowing for faster build times."
The company operates two IBM Netfinity 5000 and two Netfinity 5500 servers in a clustered fully fault tolerant environment. On the desktop, PolicyLink have IBM PC`s running the trading application, Microsoft Exchange, MS Office and Rightfax.
The WAN utilises Cisco equipment and is on-line to Sanlam Cape Town and Australia. "Technology is making us more efficient, which allows us to offer a better service and a better return," says Ringstrand.
John Comyn, sales manager I-Fusion Western Cape, attributes I-Fusion`s success in securing the business to meeting the PolicyLink requirements in implementing high availability systems on an IBM platform.
"Our ability to provide on-going support through our centralised Command Center which utilises the Tivoli Enterprise Management system software also held us in good stead," adds Comyn.
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