Axe

In 2003 the Australian Federal Government introduced new legislation, the Financial Services Reform Act (FSRA), to improve transparency and regulations in the Financial Services industry.

The FSRA sought to improve basic business practices and ensure customers knew exactly what they may be paying for.

The effects of this change were acutely felt across the Australian insurance industry, with insurers facing civil and criminal penalties if they failed to comply by the March 2004 deadline.

Working under the general insurance industry umbrella group, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), six of its members formed a consortium to develop a solution to address the logistical nightmare.

These six insurers represent over 65% of the general insurance market. Axe designed and built the solution to solve this nightmare for the consortium and now continues to maintain and enhance it.

From the beginning the consortium always intended to create an organisation that would oversee the operations of the AR Hub. Thus AR Hub Pty Ltd was born.

AR Hub Pty Ltd’s shareholders are six insurers including:

• Allianz Australia
• CGU
• GE
• MTQ
• NRMA
• QBE Commercial

The AR Hub continued to grow, operating with 18 insurers up from the original 6 insurers signed on to use the system. This equated to over 6,500 users producing Financial Services Guides. So far the AR Hub has produced over 30,300 Financial Services Guides.

With the continued growth of the AR Hub system the Board of Directors sought more cost-effective management and a source of reliable technical support.

Axe previously built the custom AR Hub solution and the disaster recovery system.

In this instance Axe offered a whole business technology solution to the AR Hub company to help them manage long term costs and growth.

The solution sought to:

• Manage the AR Hub System and all associated software and hardware servers
• Provide resources for operating the System
• Provide a help-desk to the users
• Manage the infrastructure and carry out ongoing support and maintenance
• Provide and implement a backup strategy
• Manage a disaster recovery service
• Provide new enhancements to distribution channels including ASIC and users.

Axe then transferred the AR Hub system to an Axe managed hosting environment using software including:

• IBM WebSphere Application Server
• IBM DB2 Universal Database
• SUSE Linux enterprise server

Axe delivered a complete ‘one stop shop’ solution for AR Hub Pty Ltd.

The AR Hub solution continues to grow as other insurers join.

The AR Hub is a robust e-business solution allowing insurance representatives to deliver more efficient service to their clients by providing real-time compliant insurance policy documents (Financial Services Guides) and compliance reporting to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). The online portal delivers full scalability, functionality and a simplified means for insurers and their representatives to achieve compliance with ease.

AR Hub has also achieved:

• Reduced ongoing costs associated with running the Hub
• Increased service standards to AR Hub users
• Greatly improved uptime
• Clearer reporting lines with Axe being a “single point of contact”
• Lowered the costs and risks of new enhancements
• Better knowledge management by having a documentation strategy
• Faster releases of new functions.

• A faster and more reliable service
• Over 6,500 users
• Over 30,300 FSG documents automatically produced
• Over 1,000 programs well supported
• Over 300 interactive web pages.