Manulife (International), Hong Kong's second-largest life insurer and pension provider, plans to increase the delivery of new services by streamlining its information technology infrastructure.
The company, part of Hong Kong-listed Manulife Financial of Canada, said last week that it was adopting business integration software from United States-based webMethods to support the expansion drive. Financial details were not given.
'Manulife has a wide range of insurance offerings, each with its own repository of important customer information,' said Ellen Mok, vice-president and chief information officer of the company's information technology Asia unit.
'The key to developing better, more attractive customer offerings is to integrate these different sets of information.
'The webMethods Integration Platform enables us to link these disparate information systems by creating a common backbone to integrate existing systems and support new projects planned for the next three years.'
The webMethods software helps enterprises bridge the gap between older business processes and computing systems and newer internet-based programs.
For Manulife, it will ensure that a number of new IT projects are integrated seamlessly, reducing development costs and speeding up the deployment of business applications.