Profile: Mutual of Omaha is a financial services company that provides a diverse range of insurance products and services. Founded in 1909, they employ over 6,600 people today. Mutual of Omaha provides financial security to its customers so that they may care for themselves and/or their families in difficult times. This the third consecutive year Mutual of Omaha has partnered with the J.D. Edwards Design Studio to develop a technological solution that will improve the efficiency of their operations.

Problem/Opportunity: Mutual of Omaha's Retirement Plans Division currently utilizes a legacy mainframe pricing system to facilitate the Single Premium Group (SPG) and Terminal Funding Annuity (TFA) underwriting, quoting, and pricing process. This system does not provide the levels of flexibility, usability, efficiency nor features necessary to provide accurate quotes in as timely a manner as is desirable.

Solution: The J.D. Edwards Design Studio team is working with Mutual of Omaha to redesign the SPG and TFA pricing system. The new system will create a streamlined data import process, provide the ability to store and rerun pricing scenarios, and automate the data clean-up process, all of which will help to make Mutual of Omaha's Group Benefit Services division's pricing more competitive. In addition, the new, flexible system will move operations from the existing mainframe environment into a PC-based environment.

Benefits: The pricing system will increase efficiency through less manual data entry and manipulation and an improved user interface. Specific benefits include:

1. The number of alternative interest rates considered in developing a yield curve will be increased from four to twelve.
2. The database will store pricing scenarios, dramatically increasing the efficiency for adding additional scenarios once the initial scenario has been completed.
3. Manual data manipulation will be significantly reduced with no manual data manipulation required for 90% of the cases.
4. The system will also improve competitiveness by allowing multiple pricing scenarios to be run simultaneously.

Technologies:

Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003
IBM DB2
Microsoft ASP.NET
J2EE
IBM Websphere Studio Application Developer Version 5.1