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Founded in 1843, LV= is the largest Friendly Society in the UK with more than 2.5 million customers and members and group assets of around £8bn. In 2007, LV= set out its strategy to become a top five general insurance player by 2012 and expand its pensions and at retirement business. The company announced ambitious growth plans for its asset management business acquisitions as part of this strategy: the ABC Insurance acquisition in December 2006, the Britannia Rescue Business (2007) and the former GE Life business at the end of 2007.
Following the acquisition of ABC Insurance in December 2006, a small focused IT team was recruited to support the newly expanded offices in Croydon. After the project proved a success, the decision was make to bring LV= Group IT back in-house, led by Group IT Director, Mitch Lambton across the 16 sites. There were three key reasons behind this move. Firstly, to take back the ownership of service, enabling LV= to become more agile in supporting the business’ growth plans. Secondly, to increase efficiency and drive down cost by installing standardised, repeatable IT processes across the Group. And thirdly, in order to run IT as a high quality service to the business.
Over the past year there has been an ambitious plan in place to drive IT forward, with a 200-strong in-house team working towards the goals. The first phase of the project was to put in place the foundations, based on best practice ITIL framework, to build service management around and embed identity and access management across the Group. The CA solutions will provide software delivery, service desk, asset management, automated password reset and remote trouble shooting capabilities. They have also radically upgraded the IT infrastructure completing major network upgrades and LAN and WAN infrastructure.
As a result LV= is now able to address critical business problems such as dealing with change which needs a properly managed lifecycle. In terms of benefits, the society is already seeing better reporting and metrics. They are also able to align IT services to business requirements ensuring the most important issues are prioritised.
Mitch Lambton, Group IT Director at LV= says, “CA is helping us to govern, manage and secure our IT environment to ensure we deliver high quality services that are prioritised to the needs to the business and delivered cost-effectively. We chose CA due to the breath and strength of their technology across Business Service Management, Infrastructure Management and Identity and Access Management and their integration capability”.
Chris Miller, CA Area Manager UK & Ireland says, “Six out of every 10 pounds of the average UK CIOs budget is spent on maintenance and support, or ‘keeping the lights on’ initiatives, as opposed to investments in more strategic projects that add directly to the bottom line. By standardising IT and automating IT processes, LV= is driving down the cost of administrating IT, freeing up budget to deliver high quality services back to the business based on business priorities.”
As part of phase 1 of the project LV= have implemented Service Desk, AutoSys, Desktop Management, Software Delivery and Asset Management software from CA core components within its Business Service Management. They have also implemented Identity Manager, CA’s core Identity and Access Management module.
Phase 2 began in May 2008 and will extend the capability of CMDB, full roll out of user based provisioning across all of LV=’s sites and bringing the services onto a service catalogue. The organisation intends to complete phase 2 by the end of 2008. Phase 3 will then look at Governance across the Group.
About LV=
LV= (lv.com) is a trademark of Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society Limited (LVFS) and a trading style of the Liverpool Victoria group of companies. The new LV= brand identity was launched in March 2007.
LV= employs over 2,500 people, serves more than 2.5 million customers and members, and manages around £8 billion on their behalf. We are also the UK’s largest friendly society and a leading mutual financial services provider.
LVFS is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority and entered on the Financial Services Authority Register No. 110035. LVFS is a member of the ABI, AMI, AFS and ILAG. Registered address: County Gates, Bournemouth BH1 2NF.
About CA
CA (ca.com) is the world’s leading independent IT management software company. With CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage.
Copyright © 2008 CA. All Rights Reserved. One CA Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
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