Swiss insurance group Winterthur Life has put a fresh spin on its expansion plans in Hong Kong by outsourcing its data centre operations to IBM.
The five-year contract was signed last month with IBM China/Hong Kong. The deal will cover nearly 100 information technology platforms.
The platforms include IBM AS/400 servers running the company's life insurance policy management system, its storage area network infrastructure, Windows 2000, NT servers that support a Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) program, and various networking systems.
'We examined the possibility of building a new data centre, but outsourcing offered a better way to align our IT plans with our new business model,' said Jonathan Bradbury, chief financial officer at Winterthur Life Hong Kong.
'It certainly saves us money, which is always a big consideration for a chief financial officer, but it also provides us with a number of other benefits that support our business strategy.'
The company, which started operations in Hong Kong in 1995 and has more than 300 staff, sells investment-linked (known in the industry as unit-linked) insurance products.
'Winterthur Life Hong Kong has focused on competing in the life market through service innovation, with the aim of increasing our business at a rate faster than the 10-to-12 per cent growth rate that characterises Hong Kong's fairly mature insurance market,' Mr Bradbury said.