A five-year partnership between IBM and Majesco, a provider of insurance software, consulting and services for insurance companies, aims to make things easier for enterprises in the insurance sector. The companies announced that they will jointly offer a new cognitive, cloud-based platform to help carriers build new services on IBM Cloud.
“The global partnership is intended to help provide clients with the ability to speed the development of new customer services with predictive data analytics for insurance providers to bring new solutions to their clients,” IBM said in a statement Monday.
More Collaborations Expected
IBM said it expected the partnership to be the first in a wave of collaborations that the company plans to announce as part of its recently launched Industry Platforms business. The new unit was formed to build open industry platforms and comprehensive “as-a-service” solutions designed for specific industries.
The company said that the offering will also provide a secure, global incubator for insurance companies to develop and launch new cognitive products and services for clients via the cloud.
For its part, Majesco said it will contribute software for property and casualty insurance, general liability insurance, life, annuity, pensions and insurance that improves speed to market, customer retention and business processes while responding to regulatory changes.
IBM, meanwhile, said its contribution will consist of Watson and other cognitive application programming interfaces that will run on IBM Cloud. “This will allow insurance companies to better analyze, price and understand business risks using new data sources and add an engaging and personalized advisory interface to their services,” the company said.
For Big Blue, the insurance industry represents an enormous opportunity. The company said it believes carriers face significant challenges such as rapid digitization, changing demographics, rising customer expectations, challenging economic environment, and expanding risk of sophisticated fraud. IBM said these challenges make the insurance sector one of the most interesting opportunities for enterprise 
IT companies.
Shift to Industry Platforms
“The integration of IBM Cloud and cognitive capabilities with Majesco’s market-leading core system for policy, billing and claims will allow for new, innovative products and services for insurers,” said Ketan Mehta, Majesco CEO and co-founder, in the statement. “This partnership underscores our commitment to accelerate new business services to our clients by providing them technology to transform their insurance business models.”
IBM said that its Watson AI (artificial intelligence) service and other cognitive capabilities will also provide insurance underwriters and actuaries with improved insights into customer and external data to help reduce risks from claim fraud, consolidate and streamline processes to improve pricing and increase the efficiency of underwriters.
The company said it is making a strategic shift toward platform solutions that are tailored toward specific industries, but also combine cloud services with cognitive and AI capabilities.
“Our insurance clients are facing huge pressures to modernize their business models, keep pace with the explosion of data, transactions, regulatory requirements, and new expectations for the experience of individuals,” said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Industry Platforms, in the statement.
