“It took four months to see the ROI on the first project. Employee satisfaction was on the rise and confidence had been regained. Celsior provided a structure that allowed FGL to bring people on and off as they needed. We saved 50% in development and training costs working with Celsior.”

–VP, IT Strategy & Solution Delivery, Fidelity & Guaranty Life

Client requirements

Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance Company (FGL) provides annuities and life insurance for over 700,000 policyholders across the United States with over 25,000 licensed agents.

For three years, FGL had not effectively delivered any strategic IT solutions to the business and had experienced multiple project failures. The business lost confidence in IT delivery’s capability, and IT employees became demotivated after many failures. Additionally, the business lacked critical resources to make the necessary changes.

The IT department had to find a way to resolve issues and implement an operating model with a successful formula. Agents and policyholders demanded multiple intuitive software platforms to serve the needs of new business models, and FGL needed to find a solution.

Our solution

“Celsior offered an onshore / offshore model that fit our requirements. We did not know how best to implement such a model, but their willingness to listen to our needs and be transparent throughout the entire process enabled us to identify a productive and cost-effective roadmap.”

A game plan was developed that addressed multiple questions:

• How to deliver successfully with a blended model?
• How many people should be offshore?
• How many people should be onsite?
• How to phase the approach?
• Bottlenecks and how to address them?

FGL now understands what it takes to successfully begin an operation, create an efficient software roadmap, and implement a product successfully.

Business outcomes

The new Agent Portal was the first successful project for FGL in three years. The team took a legacy portal and modernized it to improve capabilities and user experience. The portal now allows agents to access customer accounts, stay informed about products and services, and better serve the needs of the customer.

The ROI of the portal was evident in just four months, with every agent utilizing the portal, having access to information at their fingertips, providing accurate quotes, and improving the customer experience.

FGL adopted an Agile approach, and the deliverables were broken down to the point where results were visible to each manager. This brought back confidence in the IT department.

In just 12 months, FGL has been able to successfully deliver six projects with the help of Celsior by increasing their team from just 10 software developers to a hybrid team of 25 software developers and QA testers onshore and offshore. This was all accomplished by implementing Celsior’s blended delivery process model.