My name is Philippe Saby, I am the Chief Executive of Solly Azar. Solly Azar is a wholesale brokerage firm, the first of its kind in history, created by Mr Solly Azar in 1977. Every day we work with 7,000 intermediaries, general insurance company agents or brokers who distribute individual policies to private individuals and professionals. We have two main types of insurance, Property and Casualty Insurance, and Life and Health Insurance.

What was your initial challenge?

Our strategy is to make underwriting and management of insurance contracts extremely smooth, fast and simple. Since 1998, we have had a tool that manages many insurance policies, which is used on a daily basis by intermediaries and clients, but which is not interconnected with the web; therefore, our real challenge was to define how our information system can allow us to implement our strategy to make underwriting and management of insurance contracts smooth, fast and simple. We had the choice to either completely develop a specific tool or to a use a software package. We chose the second solution as we think it is more adapted to our situation and that it will be more durable and more secure.

Why did you choose CLEVA Web by Gfi ITN?

For 3 main reasons: today we have V9, which is an ancestor of CLEVA Web by Gfi ITN and therefore in terms of data model, there are similarities. When we executed the migration, this was clearly a positive point that made the process smoother. Secondly, the functional coverage that was proposed was very close to what we wanted. It wasn’t Plug and Play, but it wasn’t far off. Thirdly, it is the interfacing with the whole CLEVA Web environment that works well, that is, with the DMS, with our specific front office and with accounting. We have something that can be connected everywhere and also the catalog of 200 web services was very interesting for us.

How is the project organized?

Classically. We started with an RFI and then an RFP, we chose Gfi ITN and we made a POC. It took a long time because all the intermediate steps had to be validated. This was done by the end of the summer, so since September we have entered the scoping phase, which involves a lot of internal work for the Solly Azar business lines to express the current and future requirements for the information system that will support our strategy. We are setting the budget and will finish all this for the end of the year. Then we will give ourselves two years for the complete production and delivery in early 2021.

What have been the results of this collaboration?

The results will be seen in 2021. What I have learned from this experience is that we were very demanding with Gfi ITN and that it was a very good thing because it was the best way to succeed both for us and for them. I would also like to emphasize the importance of the collaboration between people. I know Béatrice Honnoré well, so, at general management level, our discussions were very open, which we passed on to our teams, so at every level people spoke to each other openly, about what was working well and what needed to be improved.