Major IT Project Management

Nationwide Life employs interim for new IT project management.
'The three principal demands on the assurance system were for the calculation of salesforce bonuses, provision of performance information to salesforce management and the production of reports for the PIA.'

New entrants in the life assurance business face a formidable set of demands on their IT systems. Administering the writing of a large number of differing policies and the remuneration of a direct salesforce, sales agents and third parties are the business imperatives. Another crucial demand is the statutory duty of providing detailed information to the Personal Investment Authority (PIA) to ensure that all records and transactions are compliant.

Project management of two IT systems
When the Nationwide Building Society entered the market there were two main systems to be implemented into the business: a mainframe-based life assurance system called CAPSIL and an internally developed data warehousing/management information system.

An Impact Executives' interim, Peter Andrews, was appointed as IT project manager. Peter is seasoned in IT project management with 15 years' experience of IT department management in financial services organisations including four years as head of IT at Household Mortgage Corporation, part of Abbey National.

From the outset at Nationwide Life, it was clear that user involvement in the final look and feel of the life assurance system was going to be critical to the implementation. The systems were at the stage of user acceptance testing: Andrews put together a team and instituted fortnightly meetings to ensure that each department was involved, supported and on board with the new technology.

Effective communication and the inclusion of all departments by Andrews meant the IT project management systems were fully implemented within eight months.