Transaction Monitoring for Insurance Company

 

Working with a large insurance company.  Assisted in vendor selection for a transaction monitoring compliance product.  Compiled requirements and designed integration architecture with multiple source systems.  Performed analysis and authored design specifications.  Coordinated development team.  In production November, 2010.

 

Technologies/Solutions Employed:

 

  • FISERV AML Manager
  • Informatica

 

Health Insurance Claims

 

Working with a major New England based health care insurer.  Assisted with claims system vendor selection.  Developed five year budget for migrating to new system.  Defined Service Oriented Architecture integration architecture interfacing new vendor claim system into the company’s SOA environment. 

 

Enterprise Architecture for Employee Benefits Servicing Outsourcer

 

Working with one of the country’s largest benefit outsourcers with an IT staff of 2,200, defined the Application Architecture blueprint for integrating many employee benefit servicing systems (e.g. 401(k), pension, health & welfare, stock options, human resources and payroll) within a larger systems environment.  Developed a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to provide an integrated view for customers.  Developed HR-XML influenced Enterprise Model for company’s business.  Evaluated various Enterprise Application Integration, business process management, and business activity monitoring vendor products.  Participated on Architectural Governance Board.

 

Koehler Consulting, Inc’s responsibilities / assistance: KCI acted in the roles of enterprise architect, web service and application architects, and designers.

 

New Agent Appointment Web Service

 

Automation of the steps of appointing a new insurance agent throughout the company’s systems.  This project is consistent with the company’s Enterprise Integration Architecture blueprint which promotes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).  Conceptualized, architected, and developed multiple Web Services for providing integrated business application processing and integration with back end systems, including the Vantage and Life 70 administrative systems.  Utilized Oracle’s Interconnect Enterprise Service Bus integration product and IBM’s Web Sphere Host Access Transformation Services.  In production October, 2005.  System has resulted in significant improvement in business productivity and quality.  See Client Case Study presented at March, 2006 Architect Forum.

 

KCI’s responsibilities / assistance:

 

  • Architecture
  • Functional specifications
  • Object Oriented Analysis and Design
  • XML schema design, stored procedures
  • Database Modeling
  • Construction (Java) and mentoring
  • Testing strategy
  • Project Management

  

Technologies / Methods Employed:

 

  • Oracle’s InterConnect Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) product
  • Oracle database
  • Oracle 10g Application Server
  • IBM Web Sphere Host Access Transformation Services (HATS)
  • Object Oriented Modeling and Development
  • Java, XML, XSLT, stored procedures

 

Agent Debit Balance Tracking System 

New software service to track insurance agents that have a debit commission balance and automatically generate letters during the process.   Receives feeds from Vantage and Life 70 administration systems.   In production March 2007.

 

KCI’s responsibilities / assistance:  

 

  • Architecture
  • Functional specifications
  • Object Oriented Analysis and Design
  • XML schema design, stored procedures
  • Database Modeling
  • Construction (Java) and mentoring
  • Testing strategy
  • Project Management

    

Technologies / Methods Employed: 

  • Oracle database
  • Oracle 10g Application Server
  • Object Oriented Modeling and Development
  • Java, XML, XSLT, stored procedures

 

Enterprise Architecture Blueprint

 

Developed future state systems architecture and multi-year migration road map for the CIO of an insurance company.  Described how to employ a service oriented architecture to achieve significant reuse potential.

 

Business Event Engine

 

Conceptualized, architected, and developed an extensible Business Event Engine for one of the country’s largest mutual fund companies.  The Event Engine manages a long-lived, complex, interactive user conversation for processing Work and Life Events that perform many business processing steps.  Consistent with service oriented architecture strategy, this Web Service accessed engine supports multiple access channels (including the web) and integrates many back end product systems.  Business Event persistence in DB2 (structured and non-structured data (i.e. XML).

 

KCI’s responsibilities / assistance:

 

  • Architecture
  • Functional specifications
  • Object Oriented Analysis and Design
  • XML schema design
  • Database Modeling
  • Construction
  • Component Testing
  • Component Reuse

 

The system went into production in September, 2003 as part of a major project to provide web based Retirement Benefits Initiation processing.  Reused and extended to deliver web based Non-qualified Retirement Plan Enrollment processing – in production May, 2004.

 

Technologies / Methods Employed:

 

  • Business Object Design and Development
  • .NET / C#
  • XML/XSL/XSLT

 

Business Activity Monitoring

 

Conceptualized, architected, and developed an enterprise-wise service for monitoring enterprise activity and triggering a variety of actions, including sending emails.  Implemented as a .NET/C# web Service and queue enabled service.   This service will enable a major financial services company’s event driven email capability.  Activity requests are stored in DB2.

 

KCI’s responsibilities / assistance:

 

  • Architecture
  • Object Oriented Analysis and Design
  • XML schema design
  • Functional Specifications
  • Database Modeling
  • Construction
  • Component Testing
  • Component Reuse

 

In production June, 2004.

 

Technologies / Methods Employed:

 

  • Functional Specifications / Use Cases
  • Business Object Design and Development
  • .NET / C#
  • XML/XSL/XLST

Non-Qualified Retirement Plan Enrollment

Project with a major institutional retirement plan administrator / record keeper. Built new services to determine open enrollment windows and set up distribution elections.  Enhanced existing services for making deferral elections and investment elections.  In production May, 2004.

KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Project management
  • Architecture
  • Requirements definition
  • Functional specification authoring
  • Object oriented analysis, design, and mentoring
  • Development
  • Performance tuning

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Use cases
  • Business object modeling
  • Rational ROSE
  • .NET C#, XML, Web

 

Enterprise Data Integration

 

Project with a major employer benefits outsourcer.  Integrate electronic data feeds across multiple business units / product lines.  Error integration and processing architecture and data feed content specification design and modeling to enable migration from flat file to XML based feeds and enhance compliance with industry specific standards.

KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Enterprise Architecture

 

 

 

Retirement Plan Account Management

 

This is a "thin client" implementation of a full-featured desktop application used by Customer Service representatives to deliver portfolio management options to 401(k) participants.  The service uses Microsoft .Net and browser technologies to deliver server-side processing to a client side user interface application.  KCI’s responsibilities / assistance -- KCI acted in the role of desktop/web service architects, batch

processing/MQSeries architects and C#/C++/JavaScript developers.

Technologies / methods employed:

  • ADO.Net, ASP.Net, HTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, Visual Basic, C#, MSSqlServer, HTTP, XML/XSD. 

 

In addition there is a back-end "batch" component to this application that utilizes COM, DCOM, C++/ATL, and MQSeries to deliver high-volume back-end portfolio rebalance processing.

New Business Application Setup System

 

Project with a large disability insurance carrier.  KCI developed a system that facilitates the creation of bar coded separator sheets so that New Business documents can be automatically scanned and indexed, saving substantial time over the current process.  The system also automatically assigns policy numbers and leverages data collection of the New Business insurance applications by providing a relational database that can be accessed by the Application Entry System.  Substantial reuse was realized through the use of existing enterprise components.  KCI’s responsibilities / assistance:

 

  • Object Oriented Analysis and Design
  • Database Modeling
  • Construction
  • Component Testing
  • Component Reuse

 

The system went into production October 2002.

 

Technologies / Methods Employed:

 

  • Business Object Modeling and Development
  • Visual Basic 6.0
  • Internet Explorer, Java Script, XML Data Islands
  • XML/XSL/XSLT
  • SQL Server 6.0

Account Balances Inquiry Web Service

 

Project with a major institutional retirement plan administrator / record keeper.  The software delivered for this project takes Soap encoded XML 401(k) participant balance inquiry requests over HTTP and provides a highly optimized look-up service.  In addition, the underlying software creates a Soap encoded XML response that allows participants to view their balance information by a variety of summarization and categorization criteria (e.g. asset class, contribution source, etc.). This service has high performance demands.  KCI’s responsibilities / assistance:

 

·        IIS ISAPI extension design and implementation

·        XML schema design

·        Source code optimization

·        Stress testing and performance tuning

·        Object modeling

This system went into production December 2001.

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Business object modeling and development
  • Rational ROSE
  • Windows NT server
  • Internet Information Server, ISAPI extensions
  • XML/XSL
  • C++, ATL, COM

Disability Insurance Claims Payment Engine

Project with a large insurance company.  KCI developed the system architecture and business engine for a disability insurance payment calculation engine component and associated technical services (e.g. error handling, logging).  Initial delivery of this system is for access via the company’s intranet and is integrated with the company’s disability insurance claim workflow and document imaging system (FileNet).  KCI’s responsibilities / assistance:

  • Object oriented modeling and mentoring
  • Design and implementation of calculation engine architecture including associated technologies and components necessary to call it as a web service and integrate it with the disability insurance claims web site
  • Design and implementation of technical services (logging, error handling).
  • Architecture and system design reviews
  • System scalability and availability design reviews and testing.
  • Software “manufacturing” process review
  • Project management consulting

This system went into production December 2002.

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Business object modeling and development
  • Rational ROSE
  • Windows 2000 Server
  • Internet Information Server, Active Server Pages
  • Internet Explorer, JavaScript, DHTML, XML data islands
  • Visual Basic 6.0
  • COM+
  • XML/XSL/XSLT
  • SQL Server 6.0

Tax Compliance System

Project with a large insurance company. Produced strategic tax system architecture strategy, conducted three month feasibility study, and initiated and managed a one year project to connect the KCI Tax ServerTM, an object oriented software component, to an existing MVS batch, COBOL, variable life insurance administrative system. Distributed architecture uses IBM MQSeries as the middleware between MVS and NT. System runs during the nightly batch cycle processing various policyholder transactions (e.g. premium payments, withdrawals, loans, etc.). KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Project management
  • Application architecture
  • Object oriented modeling and mentoring
  • Functional specification authoring / domain analysis
  • Development
  • System testing coordination

System went into production in October, 1997 and has processed 20+ million transactions to date. The project won the 1998 Information Technology Award at the client company. Second administrative system connection implemented in May, 1999. Third connection to Administrative System Vendor went into production in March, 2000.  Traditional life administrative system connection is currently in progress.

Technologies / methods employed:

  • IBM Visual Age Smalltalk
  • C++
  • ENVY Developer (source code management) and ENVY/QA (quality assurance tool)
  • Business object modeling and development
  • Rational ROSE
  • IBM MQSeries
  • DB2 / Oracle
  • Windows NT, Unix (Solaris and Unix Shared Services running under MVS)

Retirement Plan Account Services

Project with one of the largest institutional retirement plan administrators / record keepers. Strategic system initiative to build a reusable, object oriented, business application services that model the Defined Contribution Retirement Plan business to support multiple customer access channels, including the Web, Voice Response System, and Customer Service Workstation (> 1,000 users). Services are responsible for processing retirement plan participant transactions, e.g. loans, withdrawals, exchanges, balance inquiries, etc., and has extremely high performance demands. Project includes integration with Mainframe legacy system and Sybase database. Production date -- September, 1999. System extended (in 2001) to provide Real Time Trading of Company Stock held in 401(k) plans and XML-based Account Balance Web Service .  KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Project management
  • Architecture
  • Requirements definition
  • Functional specification authoring
  • User interface design
  • Object oriented analysis, design, and mentoring
  • Development
  • Performance tuning
  • Training

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Use cases
  • Business object modeling
  • Rational ROSE
  • C++, COM/DCOM, MTS, IIS (Internet Information Server)
  • Visual Basic (GUI)
  • XML (interface to business objects)
  • XML-based Web Services
  • NT Server

Life Insurance Policy Account Values

A Web-based, insurance policy inquiry application for displaying current policy values and history on variable life insurance policies.  Layered application architecture integrates Netscape Application Server based business objects (Java) with source systems. Production date – December, 2000.  KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object design
  • Development

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Use cases
  • Business object modeling and development
  • Web development, HTML, Netscape Enterprise Server, JScript
  • Unix-based Netscape Application Server
  • Java business object engines
  • Rational ROSE modeling software

Tax Workstation

A Web-based, insurance policy, quotation tool for a large insurance company. System provides insurance contract information and presents tax impacts of various transactional "what-if" analyses. Distributed system that integrates Web browser front-end with Unix-based business object engines. Business object application server communicates with reusable application components running on MVS to retrieve IMS master record data and invoke production Tax system. Tax system in turn communicates with the KCI Tax ServerTM running on Windows NT Server. Distributed application components communicate via IBM MQSeries. The project won the 1999 Information Technology Award at the client company. Production date -- November, 1998. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object design
  • Development
  • Project management

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Use cases
  • Business object modeling and development
  • Web development, HTML, Netscape Enterprise Server, JScript
  • Unix-based Netscape Application Server (formerly Kiva)
  • C++ business object engines
  • Rogue Wave class library
  • IBM MQSeries middleware
  • IMS/DB2
  • Rational ROSE modeling software

Customer Invoicing System

Project with a major institutional retirement plan administrator / record keeper.  A system to produce customer invoices for retirement plan administration. A web-based application utilizing a layered system architecture, including a business object component to model complex business relationships.  KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object modeling

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Business object modeling
  • Visual Basic business object layer
  • XML

Employee Stock Options System

Project with a major institutional retirement plan administrator / record keeper.  A system to provide record keeping for employee stock option grants and exercise activity.  KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object modeling 
  • Object oriented development

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Business object modeling
  • Rational ROSE
  • C++, COM, MTS, IIS (Internet Information Server)
  • NT Server

Deferred Compensation System

A server-based application that calculates deferred commissions for a special group of high producing agents at a large insurance company. The data collection screens are web enabled and allow the user community to access the application from any workstation in the enterprise that is connected to the corporate intranet. The back-end processing is encapsulated in stored procedures that access and update a normalized relational database. Production date - April, 1999. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Project Management
  • Business Specifications
  • Functional Specifications
  • Design
  • Development

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Data Modeling
  • Web development
  • Unix-based Netscape Application Server
  • Sybase Adaptive Server Version 11

Credit Card Payment System

Distributed application component responsible for processing credit card payments for life insurance policies for a large insurance company. C++ business object engine and infra-structure to communicate with mainframe administrative systems and outside credit card processor. Production date -- December, 1997. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object oriented design
  • Development
  • Coordinating vendor relationship
  • Project management

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Use cases
  • Object modeling
  • C++
  • Rogue Wave class library
  • IBM MQSeries
  • Unix

Insurance Electronic Funds Processing

Distributed application component responsible for processing credit card and electronic funds transfer payments for life insurance policies for a large insurance company. C++ business object engine and infra-structure to communicate with mainframe administrative systems, real time customer service systems and outside credit card processor. Production date -- July, 2000. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object oriented design
  • Development

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Use cases
  • Object modeling
  • C++
  • Rogue Wave class library
  • IBM MQSeries
  • Unix
  • Sybase SQL Server
  • Netscape Application Server

401(k) Industry Enterprise Object Model

Developed large mutual fund company's enterprise object model for the defined contribution retirement plan business. The model is used as a reference model for subsequent object oriented business object projects. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Facilitating modeling sessions
  • Documentation

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Object oriented analysis
  • Rational ROSE modeling software

Insurance Contract Administration System

Multi-million dollar "proof of concept" for an object oriented variable life administrative system for a large insurance company. Modeled and built parts of a object oriented insurance product administrative system to prove the viability of the technology to that domain. Demonstrated the application running on MVS. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object analysis and design mentoring
  • Object oriented testing strategy and execution

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Object modeling
  • IBM Visual Age Smalltalk

Policy Ownership / Beneficiary System

Beneficiary / Owner Change project for a large insurance company. Project is part of the company's legacy transition strategy where an object oriented application will be deployed on MVS to replace/enhance functionality in the existing legacy system. Project is compliant with IAA insurance model and was supported by an insurance consortium. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Object oriented analysis and design
  • Functional specifications
  • Legacy system analysis

Technologies / methods employed:

  • Use cases / object modeling
  • IBM Visual Age Smalltalk
  • MVS

Sales Illustration System

PC-based insurance selling system for a large insurance company. C++ business object engine which models life insurance and annuity products. KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Architecture
  • Object analysis and design
  • Development
  • Project management

Technologies / methods employed:

  • CRC cards, object modeling
  • C++
  • Windows 3.1

Financial Needs Analysis System

A PC-based system for a large insurance company. C++ business object engine which models customer's financial information and provides analyses of financial needs (e.g. retirement, education planning, life and disability insurance, investment, estate planning). KCI responsibilities / assistance:

  • Object analysis and design

Technologies / methods employed:

  • CRC cards, object modeling
  • C++
  • Windows 3.1

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Last updated: December 28, 2010