As Head of IT at NZ owned and operated Provident Insurance, Paul Natac arrived at the organisation in mid-2021 to an in-flight project to replace the insurer’s Policy Administration System (PAS). 

“Unfortunately, it did not have the right level of due diligence and rigour on the RFP process. A large financial investment was made and lost. With no new Policy Administration System,” says Natac.

He developed an Architecture Services Group capability “which removed politics and gave pure technology, enterprise service assessment.”

The timeline for the new PAS was cut and the team was under pressure to start the procurement again and deliver the project in three months.

Natac led the team to develop an RFP process that was fit for purpose and using Microsoft’s collaboration tools on Office365, to vet over 20 vendors across the globe. 

“To speed up the process, we also introduced video recordings of each product owner to give a briefing of how they want the detailed requirements to be interpreted and their vision. This cut down time and ensured consistent messaging to the two final vendors. Both final vendors are from the UK, so we had to make use of time when we did meet. So we continue to use collaborative secure channels to respond in real time and video,” says Natac.

He adds that the InsureTech organisation is used to RFPs via large volumes of pages and not driven via media tools. This approach has cut down times without compromising quality.

As part of the executive team, Natac chairs the IT Steering committee to prioritise projects and spend.

“It is compulsory attendance and I have shaped the IT Steercom pack several times to make sure all slides are relevant to the audience and see “What’s in it for them”. I ensure I remove anything that adds no value to the business,” says Natac. 

In the past 12 months, the team has also achieved:

• A data warehouse and data / insights capability
• Deployment of a new intranet 
• A new website with a new platform and design
• Cybersecurity investment and accelerated maturity on NIST score