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Fineos lands €1.5mdealwith loss adjustor Thornton
Sunday, April 12, 2009 By Elaine O’Regan
Loss adjuster Thornton &Partners has awarded a €1.5million deal to Fineos, a provider of software to the insurance sector.

Under the terms of the contract, Thornton will use Fineos Software for all property and casualty claims operations. Michael Kelly, chief executive of Fineos, said the deal was an important coup for the firm in the Irish market, which accounts for just 5-10 per cent of its revenues.

Fineos has six customers in Ireland, and employs 180 staff at offices in Dublin. A further 120 employees are based overseas in capability centres in Boston and Melbourne, and a sales offices in Sydney.

Kellys aid the firm had targeted overseas sales since launching in 1993. ‘‘We have markets in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, northern Europe and Britain. They’re all important to us strategically. Most of our customers are abroad, but we do view the Irish market as important,” he said.

Fineos sells software to the global insurance, bancassurance and government sectors. Its solutions cover claims and case management, underwriting, customer relationship management and policy administration.

The firm recently secured an overseas contract with Salus Anvar, a life assurance provider in Sweden, for software to manage disability claims and income protection.

Kelly said the agreement, the first of its kind for Fineos in the Swedish market, was an important win for the firm, which has an established presence in the disability income protection market in the US.

Fineos had revenues last year of €38 million, up from €32 million in 2007. Kelly said the company created 70 new jobs over the period, in areas including research and development, marketing and management. He said growth in the period was down to the firm’s marketing and selling capability. ‘‘In downturns in particular, claims become very high-profile.

Companies are not selling as much, but they have to mind what they already have as a business - looking after their client base,” he said. Kelly said the claims system implemented for Thornton & Partners would facilitate the future growth of the company.

Thornton handles property loss adjusting and full-cycle general insurance claims on behalf of large insurers. It is a partner to global loss adjuster Crawfords.

‘‘The deployment of our modern, web-based platform will position Thorntons for future growth while enhancing the service it gives to insurance companies. We look forward to working with the Thorntons team to make this project a real success,” said Kelly.

John Eves, managing director, Thornton & Partners, said the system was expected to lower costs and improve efficiencies.

‘‘This will help reduce the amount of time loss adjusters have to spend on routine administrative tasks, freeing them up to concentrate on the service we provide,” he said. ‘‘The solution will also allow us to easily measure our performance against the service agreements we have committed to with our insurance clients.”

In February, Fineos announced a partnership agreement with electronic claims attachments firm National Electronic Attachment to increase the ‘‘electronic transactions capabilities’’ it offered to its clients.

Last year, Fineos launched a product for dental insurers that manages the claims process. The firm said that the partnership with NEA would support integration with other insurance lines.

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