Mercator Verzekeringen
How Syntigo improved Mercator’s system availability
Right into the 90s, the insurance sector was submerged in a mountain of paper. Mercator successfully got rid of its burden of hard-copy documentation by digitising its files. That resulted in greater efficiency both in generating new policies and contracts and in claims administration. But automation also gave rise to new challenges.
“From Syntigo, we got an SLA
that is significantly better
than the competition.”
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Challenge
An electronic system that is down can cause significant losses to any business. With an insurance company like Mercator, that would also impair trust. The 3 to 4,000 brokers that the company works with expect Mercator to be reachable at all times. It’s for that reason that Mercator invested heavily in the availability of its ICT.
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Solution
In order to optimise system availability, Mercator set up a fully redundant ICT infrastructure with two separate data centres. To ensure constant mirroring between the data centres and data transmission in general, Mercator needed high throughput. Syntigo provided two optic fibre connections between the two data centres with a redundant link of 2 Gbps between the SANs, a redundant link of 1 Gbps between the LANs and a redundant Fast Ethernet of 100 Mbps. The redundancy concerns both the lines (physical cables) and the routes, which are totally different from each other. The cables’ physical entries into the building are located as far apart as possible and the telecom equipment is fully separate. The downtime of Mercator’s ICT infrastructure was reduced to a minimum. The risks have fallen massively. Mercator fully meets the business continuity requirements laid down by the Banking, Finance and Insurance Commission (CBFA).
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Benefit
Frederik Borremans: “The most noticeable thing today is the scalability of Syntigo’s solution. In the insurance sector, data volumes are on the rise, but we’re sitting pretty as far as the future is concerned. Including as regards network availability. From Syntigo, we got an SLA that is palpably better than the competition. Syntigo really gave us what we needed. From the outset, we got a very professional proposal with a total concept worked out to the last detail. The people knew what they were doing, that was clear. In addition, their technical teams were immediately involved in the project. No commercial promises, but facts. Afterwards, we were especially pleased with their flexibility during the project. The solution, the timing, all went smoothly. And at every turn we appreciated their open, very direct communication.”
Mercator is a subsidiary of the Swiss company La Bâloise, which
provides a wide range of insurance solutions for private
individuals and SMEs. In addition to ‘non-life insurance’, such as
personal liability, car, fire, liability, accident and occupational
accident cover, Mercator also has a broad range of life products
(branch 23 and branch 21 products).
Mercator sells its products through an extensive network of
independent insurance brokers.