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Satyam bullish on insurance, to induct domain experts

V. Rishi Kumar

Hyderabad , Aug 1

SATYAM Computer Services is bullish on insurancepractice, which has emerged as one of the fastest growing verticals for the company. It plans to significantly expand its operations and offerings across the US and European markets by providing end-to-end solutions, while teaming up with its business process outsourcing subsidiary, Nipuna.

The Director and Senior Vice-President and Global Head of Insurance, Satyam, Mr Ravi Bommakanti, said the company strategy to handle business based on verticals had shown significant results. While the financial services practice accounts for about 29 per cent of the business, insurance has begun to gain rapid momentum.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr. Bommakanti said: "the global insurance underwriting industry, estimated at about $1,300 billion last year, continues to grow at a healthy pace. The importance of technology for insurance companies can be gauged from the fact that IT budget accounts for about 2.5 per cent of this large market and is projected to grow to about 3.5 per cent indicating a positive spend in the sector."

Many large insurance service providers still continue to operate on legacy systems and are moving towards modernising their infrastructure and Web-enabling a range of services. Satyam's growth can be gauged from the fact that the company has added 15 major insurance companies as of June 2005, virtually adding one major client a month, with 10 of them in the US.

One of the challenges for insurance players, be they operators in the life, casualties, broker segment or underwriting areas, is the task of upgrading to new technologies. Therefore, they are looking at solutions providers such as Satyam, which is growing at about 30 per cent.

"We have consolidated our insurance offering and moved some experts from Chennai operations. Satyam continues to recruit at a rapid pace and plans to induct about 600 people by the end of this fiscal to the existing 1,200. Major companies expect vendors to offer integrated solutions addressing the process and operations," Mr Bommakanti said.

Apart from the US and the Europe, the insurance sector offers scope for growth in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Australia, New Zealand, Korea and even Japan.

Geographical expansion: Mr Bommakanti said Satyam continued to expand geographically and had set up operations in new locations including Hungary and Brazil. The company is exploring East Europe with operations in Russia. "Along with Canada and Malaysia, China is one market, we would grow over the next few years.""Satyam has made two strategic acquisitions — Citisoft and Knowledge Dynamics, over the last two quarters, and continue to view inorganic growth pretty positively," he explained.

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