The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited (Dai-ichi Life, TSE:8750) of Japan and IBM today announced a First-of-a-Kind joint research program that is expected to save one of Japan's largest insurance companies tens of millions of yen a year by utilizing a new semantic analytics technology that will increase agility and transparency across business processes.

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The global insurance industry is defined by intense competition, consolidation, globalization and increased government intervention - creating a more complex and challenging environment in which to operate.

The need to become more profitable, while delivering higher levels of client service poses many opportunities, but at the same time, presents many challenges. Dai-ichi Life wanted to simplify administration requirements associated with marketing complex insurance products, sell products and services across multiple sales channels, and adhere to government mandates. Dai-ichi Life turned to IBM for its breadth of industry-specific solutions and services and its business analytics expertise.

The new business analytics technology called IBM Semantic Analysis Solution for Process Optimization proved that it could take a holistic approach to business optimization and risk management by analyzing massive amounts of data found within daily event logs to detect performance and quality issues before they become disruptive. For example, the tool can signify if a customer inquiry is being duplicated within the system or if an employee is taking too long to answer a client's request. Using this technology, Dai-ichi Life executives have real-time access to critical information to handle client questions and requests with more speed and efficiency.

"Smarter Insurance is about applying the strategic use of technology to reduce organizational and regional silos, as well as to simplify business and operating models," said Mark Lewis, general manager, IBM's Global Insurance Industry. "Dai-ichi Life dramatically re-engineered back-office payment processes using IBM's semantic analysis technology to drive increased efficiencies, while reducing costs. This move will ensure the firm's long-term sustainability, profitability and economic competitiveness."

This program is part of IBM's First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) program, which engages researchers from IBM Research with clients to pilot emerging technologies that address real-world challenges.

IBM enhances "BAO (Business Analytics and Optimization)" to support more accurate decision making and exploration of new businesses and services by utilizing large amount of internal/external information of enterprises for business analytics. The project with Dai-ichi Life is the first joint research project in the insurance industry that uses "IBM Semantic Analysis Solution for Process Optimization", a research achievement of IBM Research - Tokyo in this area. The solution is positioned as an essential element to structure IBM's next generation insurance administration automation model "Insurance Operations of the Future." IBM will offer the solution as a part of the total solution of insurance business operation transformation.

The IBM Semantic Analysis Solution for Process Optimization is initially available in Japan through IBM Business Analytics and Optimization consulting practice. This asset is the latest in a long line of technologies developed in collaboration with IBM Research. IBM leads in the development of analytics-based solutions which help clients improve decision making across their operations. The company leverages its consulting, technology, and research resources to drive tangible benefits for clients by taking advantage of the industry's broadest portfolio of hardware, software and services optimized for analytics.

The solution, which is built on IBM SPSS Statistics, DB2 9 and IBM Cognos 8 BI, empowers the company to make better business decisions, and apply its resources more carefully.

To learn more about Dai-ichi Life's use of analytics to boost its claim processing capabilities please visit IBM's Smarter Planet blog.

About Dai-ichi Life

The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited (Dai-ichi Life) is one of the leading life insurance companies in Japan, and "Customer First" has been the management philosophy since its foundation. For more information, please visit http://www.dai-ichi-life.co.jp/english/.

About IBM

For more information about IBM insurance industry expertise, please visit: www.ibm.com/insurance.

Contact: Pasha Dahncke, 646-342-4013, bipasha@us.ibm.com

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: bipasha@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE: IBM