HDFC Life Plans 120 cr Spend for Tech Edge

HDFC Life, one of India's leading private insurers, said it will spend . 120 crore over the next four years, as part of a technology-led business transformation initiative meant to help the company be more competitive and drive business growth.  The initiative is being driven by chief executive officer Amitabh Chaudhry, who in his last job headed the business process outsourcing arm of Infosys, and Subrat Mohanty, executive vice-president for technology, also a former Infosys executive. "It will serve as a competitive wake-up call for the industry," said Partha Iyengar, vice-president and distinguished analyst at technology researcher Gartner.  HDFC Life, a joint venture between the country's largest housing finance institution HDFC and UK's Standard Life, is counted among the top five private life insurers in the country.  The company plans to invest in data analytics, information security and replace older software applications with newer ones that will allow it to adapt quickly to changing regulatory, competitive and macro-economic environments.  "The transformation will touch every part of our business," said Chaudhry, who engaged Deliotte to make recommendations and select Tata Consultancy Services as a service provider. One of the business goals of the exercise is to improve customer acquisition and retention. In the life insurance business, the ability to retain customers for at least 8-10 years is crucial to profitability, especially as acquiring a customer is expensive. At the basic level, this couldmean sending reminders for policy renewals. But the software HDFC Life is implementing will allow for more pro-active triggers based on changes to the customer's life. There could be multiple triggers such as if a customer changes the nominee, it could imply the person is now married.