TCS' UK subsidiary buys Unisys Insurance

Gets £250-million business for next 6 years

Diligenta, the UK subsidiary of India's largest information technology services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), acquired Unisys Insurance Services (UISL) from Unisys Corporation, in lieu of which the company received business worth £250 million (Rs 1,800 crore) for the next six years.

With the acquisition, Diligenta won business from Phoenix Group (earlier know as Pearl Group) and Old Mutual International. TCS will take over UISL's operations in Liverpool and Bournemouth. The total employees at both centres are 1,000.

Phoenix Group is an existing customer for Diligenta. The new deal the company won extends the contract by an additional six years, till 2018. In 2005, TCS acquired the life and pensions operations from Pearl Group, under a £486-million business process outsourcing (BPO) deal.

Diligenta was selected the preferred bidder following a rigorous process by UISL's largest client, Phoenix Group.

"TCS set up Diligenta to specialise in the provision of business process outsourcing services for the UK life & pensions industry. These new wins further cement the company's position amongst the largest providers of such services in the UK market. Diligenta has grown from strength to strength since it was set up in 2006 and today marks a further major milestone as we cross the five-million mark for policies under administration," said Phiroz Vandrevala, chairman, Diligenta, and executive firector, TCS.

Diligenta now becomes one of the leading providers within the UK's life & pensions BPO market. The number of policies it administers will rise from 3.6 million to over five million.

In July, it had completed the consolidation of two million customer policies in the UK from multiple legacy systems on to a single integrated system for the Phoenix Group. The system is based on cloud computing infrastructure.

"With this, we have agreed a deal that preserves continuity for our UISL-serviced policyholders, whilst promising a migration to the more modern administration platform already being operated by Diligenta for two million of our policies. Moving to a platform with greater scale and capability will drive down our unit costs over time, which will support our mission to deliver improved returns for our customers and value for our shareholders," said Tony Kassimiotis, managing director, operations, at Phoenix Life.