Case Study

Fortune 500 Financial Services Organization Completes Successful Major Annuity Conversion

When Thrivent Financial for Lutherans was looking for an "end-to-end" conversion service provider to handle their annuity project, they wanted a firm with proven methodologies, proven tools and experienced staff. Mike Braun, Vice President of Applications Support for Thrivent Financial stated, "We were experiencing a shortage of knowledgeable resources and also had a number of large initiatives going on at the same time. We had not done a conversion of this magnitude in a number of years so we were looking for some conversion experience with a company that could help us."

The conversion project took place over multiple weekends with Universal Conversion Technologies (UCT) of Dallas, Texas completing the annuity conversion. The conversion involved $9.4 billion in funds and the conversion of approximately 340,000 annuities, both fixed and variable. Universal Conversion Technologies made the conversion from a former LifeComm system to the LIDP Administrator system. "UCT had the resources, methodology and project management to make it a clean and successful conversion," continued Braun. "They understood product, insurance systems and administration."

Thrivent Financial actually expanded UCT's involvement in the project to help do some functional testing by putting some of UCT's business analysts on their testing team. "It helped in our testing efforts because of their knowledge," stated Braun.

One of the main benefits to utilizing UCT was that Thrivent Financial was able to leverage their scarce resources so they could concentrate on a number of major initiatives. "We always knew where we were during the project, what the status was, and UCT's communication was very effective in helping us know what the next steps were going to be," explained Braun. The conversion was delivered on time and within budget.

"They were very flexible as far as having people available to work on our project, and even when our timeline was expanded slightly because of the year end conversions we were doing, they were able to meet our needs." Thrivent Financial was able to shift resources to work on other initiatives and the conversion was completed faster than if it had been done on their own.

Working remotely most of the time was another big plus for Thrivent Financial. "We didn't even have to provide them office space," stated Braun. "We would have an onsite manager come in a couple of times a month, and with weekly calls from the team, it was a smooth process. They would work any and all hours to support the conversion. You don't have to worry about the conversion when you have people like UCT, and you can focus on more important things like the business value, business rules and actually installing the system."

Before UCT, Thrivent Financial had to rely on internal staff, internally developed tools and knowledge. With UCT's stable staff and commitment, the annuity conversion was highly successful. "They have people with many, many years of experience as business analysts and developers in the industry," concluded Braun. Thrivent Financial has worked with UCT for more than a year now.

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is the new organization that was formed from the merger of Aid Association for Lutherans and Lutheran Brotherhood on January 1, 2002. They offer along with their affiliates a variety of insurance, investment and banking opportunities to nearly 3 million members nationwide.

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