Phoenix Group
2005 marked Diligenta's entry into the UK Life & Pensions business process outsourcing (BPO) market with a successful bid to work alongside the Phoenix Group (formerly known as the Pearl Group), in what Datamonitor described as the largest ever policy administration deal - worth £486 million over 12 years.
Portfolios
Phoenix Group includes the diverse and long-established product portfolios of the following Companies and totals 6.6m policyholders.
- Phoenix Life Limited or Phoenix and London Assurance Limited
- Phoenix Life Limited (Irish branch)
- Pearl Assurance PLC
- NPI Limited or National Provident Life Limited
- London Life Limited
- Scottish Mutual International Limited
Currently, Diligenta services policies belonging to Pearl, London Life and NPI customers
Process
High-level transition activities included:
- Preparation for service transfer, including separation from the retained company's infrastructure whilst ensuring a smooth transition of the existing operational functions;
- The establishment of changed process and systems interfaces between Diligenta and the retained organisation. This included the development of challenging service levels;
- Establishing Diligenta’s organisational model, and agreeing the BPO governance model from day one;
- Transferring 1000 staff, following due process - transfer of undertakings and protection of employment regulations (TUPE)
- Establishing the required staff pension schemes;
- Ensuring all recruitment and resourcing activities were in place at the point of service transfer in order to sustain ongoing business as usual operations.
Challenges
- The requirement by both parties to complete the deal by a fixed service transfer date;
- The importance of safeguarding the value of the trading brands;
- The need to maintain staff goodwill and involvement.
Results
- The entire transition was completed in a period of less than 6 months. The scale, as well as the speed with which it was accomplished, is unprecedented in the UK L&P BPO market;
- Subsequent to the service transfer, the businesses are operating well together and service levels are being achieved;
- Transferred staff have positively embraced the challenges of their roles.
|
