Premium Credit Limited
Scenario
Internet channel for Personal Lines & Schemes Division of PCL, a subsidiary of MBNA European Bank Ltd.
Situation
With more than two million customers, PCL is the UK market leader in the provision to individuals and businesses of finance for funding insurance premiums. PCL's business comes through client brokers and insurers spread across the UK.
PCL was looking to improve the service it provided to its clients, and strengthen its competitive position, by providing finance information online, avoiding the need to issue reports on paper and reducing the queries handled by its call centre.
Charteris Role
Having assisted PCL in developing a business justification for the project, Charteris was selected to deliver the solution. This involved managing the entire project, from requirements analysis to acceptance testing and handover to PCL. The solution was hosted by a Charteris partner, Attenda, a leading operator of secure Internet services. Verification and testing services were provided by nFocus, another Charteris partner.
Solution
The system, branded PLaSMA (Personal Lines and Schemes Management Access), was delivered, as planned at the pre-project stage, in twenty-two weeks and within the agreed budget. The project included knowledge transfer to a PCL team, which Charteris helped to recruit.
PLaSMA includes features such as secure login, extensive search functions with 'drill down' capability, exportable files and printer-friendly reports in a variety of formats.
Following a pilot phase involving 65 clients, the service was launched in July 2004. Sharon Beckett, managing director at PCL, said:
"Our relationships with our clients are absolutely crucial to us. We have won a number of awards for our service quality but we do not stand still and are continually looking for ways of improving the level of service we provide. PLaSMA is an exciting and revolutionary new feature of that service, which gives our clients access to information that will save them time and money.
Charteris impressed us with their overall professionalism and the range and depth of skills they brought to the table, both from their own consultants and their business partners. We also liked the fact that the Microsoft .NET technology, of which Charteris is an expert provider, would allow us to bring the new system to market with maximum speed."