Unisys wins £50m Swiss Life pensions BPO deal

Unisys has won a £50m business process outsourcing (BPO) contract extension with insurance firm Swiss Life UK.

The 10-year deal will see Unisys process and administer an additional 750,000 life and pensions policies for Resolution Life Group, which recently acquired Swiss Life UK.

Resolution buys and runs 'closed book' life insurance funds and paid £850m for the life assurance operations of Royal & Sun Alliance last year. Closed books are insurance policies no longer offered in the market, but which still have existing policies and policyholders that need to be administered and supported until they expire.

The new Swiss Life UK work will be handled by Unisys subsidiary Unisys Insurance Services Limited (UISL), which manages around 4.2 million policies for a range of clients including Abbey Life.

Keith Greenfield, MD at Resolution, told silicon.com that outsourcing a closed book gives some certainty on expenses.

"In a closed book there is only one thing that can happen. The policies run off, the expenses are variable and the per policy cost gets more expensive. One way to combat that is to outsource the administration on an agreed per policy charge. This reduces the expenses risk. The in-house cost estimates were a considerable step up from outsourcing," he said.

Greenfield said outsourcing to Unisys also helps retain key skills and knowledge and provides benefits for customers in terms of certainty on policy expenses and better bonuses.