After securing £1m capital injection last month, Iotatech partners with major consulting firm
Iotatech, the insurance software developer has partnered with IT consulting firm CGI in the provision of its claims software.
The news comes less than a month after Iotatech secured £1m in its second round of funding.
Iotatech is led by some of the most experienced people in the industry. Chief executive Michael Sargeant founded IT-Freedom, while Tony Emms, who is on Iotatech’s Strategic Advisory Council, is a former chief claims officer for Zurich UK and Thatcham chairman. Emms was also awarded the lifetime achievement award at the Insurance Times Claims Awards 2017.
Robert Thomson, Iotatech’s chief revenue officer said: “A lot of insurers and companies look at startup and dismiss them. But because of the due diligence these guys have done, we have that to back it up.”
Jeremy Owenson, partner at CGI, which has recently launched its Emerging Technology practice, said he was ”very pleased” that Iotatech was the first to be on that platform in the insurance sector.
The competition
Iotatech has shown pride in the fact that it believes it does everything different to the rest. And Thomson says that is reflected on the type of company it aims at doing business with.
“Most service providers want to do business with the tier one or tier two companies. You know, the big ones. But most of the business is in tier three or four. That is what we want to go for.
“There is Guidewire and then the rest, really.”
The technology
Iotatech focussed on microservices, where every small part of the claim process has its own process and separate part of the application. This allows Iotatech to create bespoke processes, depending on a client’s needs.
For example, first notification of loss (FNOL) is its own separate part of the claims process which can be added and altered on the system quickly and easily.
But, as well as this, Iotatech says that a company can take a specific part of the process and integrate it into another company’s system if that company does not provide that.
Thomson said: “If you took FNOL as an example. A company would be able to take our FNOL process as a separate process from our architecture and integrate it into their Guidewire system. “Guidewire doesn’t offer off-the-shelf FNOL for the UK.”
Another thing Iotatech was very proud to mention was the speed at which it can update the software.
”Some software companies take far too long to update,” Thomson said. ”When they install the new system, they have to push the old one out. That can take a year or even longer. To us, that is unacceptable.
”We have the ability to update a system near-enough straight away.We want it to be as easy as updating an app or the operating system on your smartphone.”
The future
The system is live for a claim process at the moment, but Iotatech has plans to expand it to the policy side of insurance also.
”We want to upscale, and we are looking at how we can create this software on the policy side,” Thomson said.
“We want to get that first big deal under our belt before we can start thinking about that with any real conviction.
“When will that first deal come about? Hopefully soon according to Thomson.
He said: ”There have been discussions, but I don’t want to jinx it. I would like to say at Christmas that we have our first big deal.”
The deal
Owenson described how negotiations of a deal between Iotatech and CGI have been ongoing since easter.
“What struck me was the architecture,” he said. “They have built a future-proof platform.
“CGI were sold on it ever since we saw the demo, and we have been working for the last couple of months developing that pipeline to try and take this to market.
“We have a new head of insurance and she is excited by the opportunity to work together.”
No comments yet