OREANDA-NEWS. IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a five-year partnership with Majesco, a global provider of core insurance software, consulting and services for insurance business transformation, to jointly offer a new cognitive, cloud-based platform to help insurance carriers worldwide create 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. It also becomes the first in what is expected to be a wave of industry partnerships under IBM’s recently announced Industry Platforms business. The new unit was formed to build open industry platforms and the first comprehensive “as a service” solutions designed from the ground up for individual industries.

The joint IBM and Majesco offering will also provide a secure, global incubator for insurance companies to develop and launch new cognitive products and services via the cloud for clients.  

Majesco operates in eight countries in all regions of the world, including North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia, and will contribute advanced software to this offering 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 will contribute Watson and other cognitive application programming interfaces (APIs) 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. IBM continues to lay the foundation for the API economy by opening up new opportunities to create different kinds of business models via the cloud that can increase customer satisfaction through more personalized services and expanded partner networks – a catalyst for digital transformation.

According to industry experts, the insurance industry is facing multiple forces of change - rapid digitization, changing demographics, rising customer expectations, challenging economic environment and expanding risk of sophisticated fraud.

“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. “This partnership underscores our commitment to accelerate new business services to our clients by providing them technology to transform their insurance business models.”

IBM Watson and other cognitive capabilities will also provide insurance underwriters and actuaries with improved insights into both customer and external data to help reduce risks from claim fraud, consolidate and streamline processes to improve pricing and increase the efficiency of underwriters. These advances can help to ultimately drive a more competitive insurance marketplace.