UK Insurer 1st Central Processes More than 100 Million Insurance Quotations with Help from Accenture

LONDON – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) announced that Accenture’s Duck Creek Rating software product has helped UK-based specialty car insurer 1st Central achieve growth since its founding in 2008.

“1st Central has grown rapidly from just 62 employees to more than 500, selling over a million car insurance policies and serving more than 250,000 customers today,” said Peter Johnson, CIO, 1st Central. “This growth and profitability would not have been possible without a robust and flexible rating software solution like Accenture Duck Creek Rating. The software’s granular rating functionality and codeless configuration capabilities enable us to immediately react to market opportunities and generate price changes -- multiple times daily, if required – providing the competitive edge we need in order to increase market share. It also offers a straightforward integration with the major aggregators operating in the UK marketplace, which helps customers quickly find a competitively-priced insurance quote.”

1st Central completes an average of 400,000 to 750,000 insurance quotes daily through the software, at a rate of less than one second per quote. Last year the insurer processed more than 130 million quotes resulting in the sale of approximately 200,000 car insurance policies.

‘We are delighted with the success that 1st Central has had with Accenture Duck Creek Rating,” said Albert Juanals, managing director and head of Accenture Software for P&C Insurance in Europe, Africa and Latin America. “The performance achieved by 1st Central provides a tangible example of how flexible and powerful this solution is. With its codeless configuration capabilities, Accenture Duck Creek Rating allows insurers’ business teams to manage all updates and changes in-house with limited intervention from their IT departments, offering customer-tailored pricing that will help position them to win in a crowded marketplace.”

Accenture Duck Creek Rating is part of Accenture’s award-winning Duck Creek policy and claims (P&C) software suite, which offers carriers an integrated suite of software with modules that can be implemented individually or as part of a broader migration strategy. The combined software enables insurers of all sizes to benefit from a flexible suite of P&C software to configure products, transact lines of business and process claims.

About 1st Central
1st Central is part of the First Central Group (Group), founded by Ken Acott, Pat Tilley, Peter Creed and Mike Leonard as a provider of online motor insurance. 1st Central provides a variety of services to the Group’s Gibraltar based intermediary and insurance companies and the Group has enjoyed exponential growth since its launch in 2008, with around 300,000 customers and one million policies sold since launch.

A period of investment in the business throughout 2011 and 2012 has seen 1st Central reinforce its management team with recognised market experts, embed a scalable policy administration platform which is equipped for further growth, integrate advanced fraud detection technology and implement a sophisticated end-to-end claims management system. The Group is now firmly established as a successful market leader within the motor insurance market and is ready to move into its next phase of sustained growth and expansion.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 266,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$27.9 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2012. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

Accenture Software combines deep technology acumen with industry knowledge to develop differentiated software products. It offers innovative software-based solutions to enable organizations to meet their business goals and achieve high performance. Its home page is www.accenture.com/software. For P&C Insurance software, its home page is www.accenture.com/pcsoftware. Accenture’s P&C insurance software is also part of Accenture Property & Casualty Insurance Services. By applying its extensive industry knowledge to continuously enhance its software, Accenture helps insurers reduce operating costs, and drive growth through better customer interaction and product innovation.

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