Insurance Project

Udhaya Govindaswamy

***, ********** ****, *** **-F, Parsippany, New Jersey 07054

Home Phone: 973-***-****. Cell Phone: 862-***-****

Email: ***********@*****.***

Summary:

A Successful Business Analyst with 8 years of insightful experience in

the insurance industry and a seasoned professional with proven potential

in the areas of business analysis, P&C insurance Claims Management,

Underwriting and good Relationship Management

Specialties:

Insurance/IT Domain ( Requirement Analysis & Documentation ( Gap

Analysis ( Functional Testing ( SDLC ( Insurance Process Analysis &

Redesign ( Management of Cross Functional Teams ( Project Tracking (

Cost & Resource Estimates ( Project Risk & Scope ( Property & Casualty

(P&C) Commercial Insurance Claims Management ( Liability Insurance & WC

specialist ( Customer Management

Profile:

< Work Experience: Highly accomplished Business Analyst with 8 years of

rich experience in managing complex IT projects in Property & Casualty

(P&C) Insurance sector and exceeding expectations

< Business Certification: Outstanding Industry knowledge gained by

experience and the various professional Certifications held. Fellow

member FIII; Student member AI CPCU

< Technical Skills: Proficient at technical aspects of analysis

including DB, SQL, screen designing, defect tracking, use case

management, other MS Office tools.

< Business Experience: Worked in underwriting and Claims for Personal and

Commercial Insurance. More focussed on commercial lines. Excelled at

clarifying business requirements, performing gap analysis between goals

and existing procedure/skills sets, and designing process and system

improvements to increase productivity and reduce costs

< Personal Traits: Strong interpersonal skills and analytical mind-set,

highly adept at diplomatically facilitating discussions and negotiations

with stakeholders. A motivated and diligent team player, well versed in

managing, motivating and leading teams towards successful business

aligned IT operations

< Project Management Skills: Recognized project management skills to

consistently deliver complex projects on time and within budget

< Life Insurance: Good knowledge of Life Insurance business and

operations too gained from Professional Certification.

Professional Outline

. Past Employers: Associated with leading companies like HCL America,

Fairfax Group-ICICI Lombard P&C Insurance Company and Tata AIG General

(P&C) Insurance Company of AIG.

. Locations: Ability to adapt well and perform in competitive environment

with massive project experience from Canada and USA.

. Achievements: Handled multiple projects in HCL America, personally

received client appreciation and rated "Outstanding Employee" twice in

annual appraisal. Received client appreciation for adept handling of

Hull & Machinery Reinsurance claim for a Hurricane Rita loss. Received

CEO`s appreciation for quality of Audio-synced Training Material created

. Domain Skills: Excellent at Insurance/IT domain, with complete

understanding of P&C Insurance Products, Practices and Processes.

Specialist at Commercial insurance with special focus on Liability

Insurance and Workers Compensation Lines.

. Business Skills: Provide business process and re-engineering support to

clients. Facilitate JAD sessions with clients to gather and document

requirements.

. Business Skills: Intuitive mapping of business processes, creation of

business & functional specifications and providing testing support in

functional and domain areas into practice and applications designing

using industry standard tools & techniques.

Professional Experience

HCL America

Business Analyst (May 2007 - Jan 2010)

Key Responsibilities:

. Responsible for enhancing business and handling IT Project RFP's (Request

for Proposal).

. Conducting Joint Application Development sessions (JAD) to understand

customer's requirement from the software

. Conducting trainings and follow-up meetings with developers to understand

the clients' requirement.

. Preparing Requirement Document, Screen mocks, presentations to convey the

understanding to the team.

. Reviewing the test cases prepared to test the application.

. Report software defects with the help of defect reporting tools.

. Conducting comprehensive testing to ensure business functionality before

handing over the application to business users

Key Accomplishments:

. Rated "Outstanding Employee" twice for best performance and client

appreciation.

. Received constant appreciation mails from customers for proactive

initiatives to maintain project timelines apart from managing customers'

expectations at Allianz FFIC.

. Client had recommended the work at Workers Compensation Board for

spearheading initiatives to thoroughly test the application before final

roll-off, failing which the Board could have had substantial financial

impact.

. Was selected as the Faculty member of the Internal Training Centre at HCL

Technologies to develop the Subject knowledge of employees based on

training skills and business knowledge.

Project Handled for Allianz - Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, California,

USA (June2009 - Jan2010):

Project: Development of Commercial Insurance Look-up System (CILS) bridging

Mainframe and Java technologies.

Project Outline: The project dealt with developing a middleware application

to transform the Commercial Insurance policy related information from the

recently developed underwriting system to the Mainframe legacy rating

application along with additional rating information from 15 different look-

up systems.

The task is to create a mapping document to ensure all information fields

were accounted for, mapped and transported to the correct fields in the

legacy application, failing which, the legacy application would blow-up

causing business interruption. This project helps the customer service

representatives in capturing the information in both the applications,

saving time & energy in consolidating all the look-up information.

Responsibilities:

. Conducting JAD (Joint Application Development) sessions with Business

stakeholders to collect requirements.

. Preparing requirement document and receiving sign-off to ensure accuracy

of business understanding.

. Creating Screen prototypes using I-Rise screen modeler to ensure the

Business and the developers are on agreement about the final deliverable.

. Reviewing test-cases written by the testing team for System-Integration

Testing.

. Performing Functional Verification Testing before the application is

handed over to the users for User Acceptance Testing.

. Conducting daily defect meetings to ensure the validity of the defects

logged in the defect tracking tool (Mercury Quality Centre) and to

provide analysis of the valid defects that were raised by business

stakeholders.

Project Handled for Allianz - Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, California,

USA (Aril 2009 - Jun 2009):

Project: Assessment and Redesign of the Existing Release Management and

Project Testing Processes

Project Outline: Allianz FFIC's Technology department handles multiple

projects to support Business initiatives to capture the Insurance market.

The project was an Assessment of the existing Release Management and

Testing processes followed by the various projects and proposing a

Centralized process to all the projects at enterprise level.

This centralized process was to be in line with AZOA's (Allianz of

America's) tested Process to ensure uniformity across the organization.

Responsibilities:

. Interviewed business representatives and assessed the various software

applications within FFIC developed for various insurance functionalities.

. Studied tasks from Web Entry of Quote details from Producers till

providing data to Personal and Commercial Departments, providing quotes

to Producers, underwriting and closing the business, apart from billing

and Claims Management.

. Estimated the complexity of the Software Applications used in FFIC,

estimated the efforts involved in testing the applications across all

phases of Testing like System Integration Testing, Functional Testing and

User Acceptance Testing.

. Assessed the Release Management practice followed by various applications

to set-up a Centralized Release Management Team within the Insurance

Company.

. Continuously presented our interim and final analysis and solutions to

CTO and Project Sponsor for sign-off of our methodology.

. Submitted a report on the study and suggested solutions to bring

uniformity in Release Management and Testing Processes.

Project Handled for Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia, Canada

(Mar 2008 - Mar 2009)

Project: Automation of Claims Management System for Workers' Compensation

(WC) Insurance

Project Outline: The project aimed at replacing 20 year old Legacy System

and onetime release of the new partly web-based Software to manage 80% of

the claims by automation. Curam Software forms the basis, which is

customized to meet specific requirements of the WC Board. The Claims

Management System that was developed was one of the largest automated (BPO)

Claims systems in US and Canada.

The project was a huge success in British Columbia and many other Provinces

of Canada are now following suit in replacing their software for their

respective Workers Compensation Board.

Responsibilities:

. Understanding requirements and the existing application through a series

of sessions and training the Testing Team at HCL Technologies while

working in Canada with the Client.

. Gathered the requirements of various departments from the Business Users.

. Prepared an overview document to demonstrate to the customer regarding

understanding of the project, currently being used as project

documentation for knowledge transfer to new team members.

. Reviewed the Test Cases that were written to ensure the functionality and

other requirements were captured correctly.

. Conducted regular meetings & presentations with the client to report the

development of the Project and to address major issues & concerns.

. Worked with tools like TestTrackPro / ClearCase / IBM Command Editor /

Edit Plus to report the defects (SQAs), maintain versions of the

Requirement Documents, to query database and to modify the xml and flat

files that were used as input files to test the automation workflow of

the system.

HCL Technologies Ltd (May 2007 - Feb 2008)

Accomplishments

. Developed New Policy Contract Wordings for a leading US P&C Insurer for

their Home Insurance Products. This entailed working closely with their

Chief Underwriter and developing wordings as per ISO guidelines and in

line with their existing Countrywide and State Contracts.

. Lead the Requirement Study for the largest Public Sector Insurance

Company in India. The company was interested in revamping its existing

systems and the project included preparation of Solutions, integration of

Insure3 and Siebel Systems for demonstration purpose.

. Appraised the existing Policy Administration System of a US based P&C

Insurer for the lines of Auto, Workmen's Compensation and Liability

Insurance. This assessment helped the Project Management Team with the

cost and effort estimation. Prepared the Analysis Document for client

submission to convey our understanding of the current system and the

enhancements as required by the client.

. Worked on a proposal for an Indian P&C insurer who was in the process of

assessing various products on preset parameters. As an analyst, had

prepared detailed documentation to enable the product company in

understanding the client's requirements and expectations so as to

demonstrate their product capabilities on the lines as desired by the

client.

Previous Assignments

Fairfax Financial Holdings - ICICI Lombard P&C Insurance Company

Senior Claims Executive - Commercial Insurance (Jun 2004 - Apr 2007)

Commercial Business specialist- IT Liaison (Mar 2006 - Apr 2007)

Highlights:

. Efficient review, adjustment and payment of commercial insurance claims

for D&O, EPLI and WC insurance.

. Handled customer complaints pertaining to claims settlement and lead the

customer satisfaction initiative.

. Managed expense control, monitoring loss and cost objectives for the

regional branch office apart from coordinating the effort with the rest

of the branch offices.

. Responsible for the management of associates including performance

management, training and development, workflow planning, hiring and

placement, and disciplinary actions.

. Supported claims performance improvement via participation in special

claims initiatives.

. Recruited team members for the Claims team along with the HR department.

. Was responsible for increasing customer awareness on Liability products

by way of presentations and brochure preparation.

. Prepared training manuals for the insurance company's Producers and

employees on Claims management in general and Liability insurance in

particular.

. Handled Claims for large corporates that involved reinsurance recoveries.

. Successfully released interactive, voice synchronized Insurance CDs for

the training of Producers and a product based CD for the in-house

employees which was released on an All-India basis.

. Prepared the Induction Training Material and the Advanced Training Manual

for use by the Corporate HR

. Chosen as Regional Coordinator for International Deals based on expertise

on the same.

. Vested with the responsibility of handling claims for the top premium-

paying clients of the company.

. Good Knowledge of the Operational Procedures followed in Insurance

Companies.

. Lead the business team to assist developing new in-house software to meet

Claims Department's need.

Achievements

. Received client appreciation for a reinsurance claims handling involving

hurricane Rita.

. Was nominated and selected to be the candidate to work with State

government authorities to handle claims of a social welfare insurance

product for the state.

. Received appreciation from the Managing Director for the CD we had

released as part of training initiative.

American Insurance Group - Tata AIG P&C Insurance Company Limited

Underwriter - personal insurance (April 2002 - May 2004)

Highlights:

. Responsible for underwriting Auto and travel insurance policies in terms

of loss experience, inspection reports, file information, web

information, policyholder tenure, related policies, and nature of risk in

accordance with company guidelines, standards and compliance with state

laws.

. Counsel and support marketing and sales personnel and Producers with

respect to underwriting guidelines and risks to be accepted.

. Translate the underwriting circular to company for any impacts to new and

existing business.

. Successfully increased the persistency levels of auto policies from 60%

to 92% by way of effective team management

. Developed Training material and conducted interactive and much sought

after training sessions for insurance producers.

. Proactively suggested changes to be made to the company's internal

underwriting manual to alter the kinds of risks to accept and to avoid

. Proactively involved and gained senior underwriter's accolade for

underwriting other lines of business like Home and Health Insurance

policies

. Actively participated in Claims process of orphan policies by providing

the necessary support for the Claims executives

. Assisted the senior underwriters by collecting information about the

applicants and evaluated them based on the standard underwriting

strategies and scope.

Skills Set

. Database: IBM DB2, IMS (Mainframe), Lotus Notes

. Defect Tracking Tools: Test Track Pro, Mercury Quality Center

. Screen Designing Tools: I-Rise screen modeler

. Management Tools: MS Project, MS Visio, MS Word, Excel,

PowerPoint and other MS Office tools

. Other Tools: Clear Case; MS SharePoint;

. Platforms: Windows NT/2000/XP

Professional Development

. AICPCU - Student Member, Institute of Chartered Property and Casualty

Underwriter (CPCU), USA

. FIII - Fellow Member (P&C), Insurance Institute of India. Recognized by

AICPCU, USA and CII, London

. FLMI - Fellow, Life Management Institute from Life Office Management

Association (LOMA), USA

Education

. MBA (Insurance), IBS, ICFAI University. 7.6 CGPA

. B.Com (Commerce), Ethiraj College, Madras University. 75% [pic]

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