FARMINGTON, CT--(Marketwire - May 24, 2012) - [ The Innovation Group plc (Innovation Group) ], a global provider of business process services and software solutions to the insurance, fleet, automotive and property industries, today released a new version of Insurer Conversion, the conversion component for the Innovation Insurer suite. Insurer Conversion was recently recognized with the Vanguards in Insurance Practice (VIP) award for Lloyds Banking Group's conversion of 2.3 million policies.

Based on industry trends, research and experience, insurers require data conversion capabilities beyond the implementation of a new policy management system including: business strategy change, merger and acquisition, divestment of a company or line of business, product consolidation, adding new data to improve customer experience, systems consolidation or BPO. Many insurers view policy conversions as a high-risk endeavor based on past experience. However, successful policy data conversions are critical to both renewal and growth for insurance companies.

"Insurers are under pressure to modernize and streamline insurance processing with new policy administration solutions, while establishing a platform for business agility and growth," said Andy Roberts, Group CEO for Innovation Group. "Insurer Conversion provides a robust, modern conversion tool to successfully and accurately convert policy data to Insurer Policy. Insurer Policy and Insurer Conversion provide a compelling integrated solution for insurers to meet today's immediate policy management needs and a platform that opens up business options for growth."

"The addition of data conversion functionality, building on Innovation Group's experience and expertise, is a strong addition to the Innovation insurer suite," said Craig Beattie, analyst in the insurance practice for Celent. "Data conversion tooling helps insurers improve speed, mitigate risk and realise the full value of new system implementations, policy migration projects as well as projects absorbing new data into the organisation."

Innovation Conversion leverages the Innovation Insurer enterprise data model as the central reference data model for standardized data definitions, data formats, and data relationships to ensure data consistency. The data model is easily extendable to accommodate any unique data elements used within an insurer's business.

Insurer Conversion includes a toolkit and methodology, EMILA, which leverages "best practice" processes and routines including:

• Extract: Retrieval of data from legacy systems based on pre-agreed exclusion criteria with a fully reconcilable audit trail and set of reports.
• Map: Apply target validation and data mapping rules. Restructure the data into interface files, representing the groupings needed for the integrity stage and report results for audit.
• Integrity: Create tables being representations of target system. Enhance data passed into this stage to include all target information beyond the data provided at new business. Eliminate duplicate clients, addresses and phone numbers. Create a fully reconcilable audit trail and reports.
• Load: Create load files in a format ready for load to target tables using the representation provided by the integrity stage. Report results to the audit manager and final reports confirming the success of the conversion.
• Audit: Create all required counts, calculations and formulae required to confirm the success of the conversion whilst providing functionality to reconcile the figures and report both successes and failures at all stages of the process.

Innovation Group has deep experience with an array of strategies for policy data conversions including at renewal, multiple mini conversions and comprehensive, big bang conversions with 100 percent quality and accuracy. Examples include:

• Conversion of three lines of business across 48 states;
• Consolidation of 12 products into one product;
• Conversion of over 2.3 million policies with all associated policy data (current and historical), and 3.2 million client records, resulting in a combined 4.8 million policies and 5 million customer records being processed on Insurer Policy; and
• Conversion included all historical images and associated data including client, billing, claims and communications resulting in over three-quarters of a billion data rows.

Innovation Group's solutions have been recognized recently with Celent Model Insurer awards in 2010, 2011 and 2012; VIP awards in 2010, 2011 and 2012; RAVE awards in 2011 and 2012; XCelent Awards in 2012; outstanding Novarica ACE Rankings in 2010, 2011 and 2012; INNovators Award in 2009 and Outsourcing Excellence finalist in 2010 and 2011.

About The Innovation Group plc:
The Innovation Group plc (LSE: TIG.L) is a global provider of business process services and software solutions to the insurance, fleet, automotive and property industries. Innovation Group provides contact centers, repair networks, process management, supply chain and technology operations and decision support analytics to support accident management, repair and estimation and claims management services. Innovation Group has over 800 global clients including AXA Insurance, RSA, Encompass, Hertz, CNA, Main Street America Group, American Modern Insurance Group, LeasePlan, The Ford Motor Company, Aviva, Toyota and Zurich. The Group processes more than 4 million claims per year with 20 per cent direct claims cost saving achieved. Innovation Group's 2,300 people are located in the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain and United States. [ www.innovation-group.com ]