Platform as a Service (PaaS)

I was allotted an assignment at office to write an article on "How technology will make bancassurance Agile". Since I am from a non-technical background i found the task challenging as well as scary because I have zero knowledge on application software. However, secondary research and a lot of primary information helped me solve the dilemma faced. To begin with I had to understand the industry, leading players, its business processes, its work models and the basic type of technologies implemented. On doing secondary research I found out that bancassurance is predominant in Europe and is making inroads into Asia and the Middle East. I also found out that bancassurance has three business processes one the front end, the other middle end and the third the back –end. The front end process involves a point of sale (POS), customers, agents and bank employees. This includes anyone who is interacting with the client and delivering the product to the end user. The middle end process involves the claims management and approval process and the final process called the back end involves application processing, premium notice processing and database maintenance.

Going forward, banking and insurance companies operate on three basic models namely the joint venture model, the integrated model and the distribution channel model.

And finally the technology, most of the banks and insurance companies implement STP (straight through processing), SAP (Simplification of application process), web enabled services, Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Solution as a Service (SaaS). These were the main type of technologies that banks implemented across business processes to either improve efficiency or partly reduce costs or increase business value or improve customer service.
However, on a closer look i found that there is some dragon called PaaS implemented by banking and insurance companies. On reading about technologies I started getting confused whether the technologies were separate components like a table/chair or did they become a dining table. To my surprise the technology implemented by banks was like a 'sponge' yes you would wonder why a sponge cause it really has the ability to adapt to whatever it’s subjected to. For example, we can add as much water we want and the sponge soaks it, we can give the sponge the shape we wish to and finally it still supports all the changes that we subject it to. So in reality a PaaS is a sytem that hepls us incorporate changes in the existing products, introduce new products and still be able to experiment with it without changing the base technology.... So hats off to PaaS....