Page 84 - 190_

84
“We need IT skills but not just people who are in IT for the sake of it,” Mrs. Merkley says.

“More importantly, we need people with the right attitude, who want to work for a global

organization and add value to the business”.
“Most people can learn new technology; the challenge is to get their heads onto a business

and into a business team attitude. Sometimes their work has to be adaptable so it can be used
elsewhere. Sometimes we need them to travel to Zurich or New York for a couple of days. Not

everyone wants this. In fact I’ve actually talked some job applicants out of joining us.”

Her own travels take her between the main data centers in Zurich, the City of London, New
York, and other cities.

She has 60 IT staff in London and a similar number in New York, with 24 in Zurich and a
dozen in Johannesburg. Each center has local management, and they all meet three or four times a

year.
All this is now changing quickly. “We had three data centers in North America; we now

have one in New York. We also now have one database tool, Natural, running on IBM

mainframes.”
“The basic system is also being ported from New York to the UK, so we will have the same

core technology in both centers – the same databases will then be handled by similar systems.”
Further consolidation of the main centers is possible as Mrs. Merkley looks at moving the

Life & Health Division systems in Zurich to London.

Investment in mainframes and the client data it managers is already being built on through
substantial data collection activity, which Mrs. Merkley refers to as knowledge management.

“The life and health insurance markets are changing rapidly at present,” she says. “With the
continuing decline of the welfare state in the UK and growth in popularity of private medical

insurance, long-term care and other related policies, we have had to adapt to change rapidly and

develop the ability to manage vast amounts of information on risks. Indeed, the reinsurance market
is all about managing risk.”

“To do this successfully we need access to all the information available to enable us to make
critical decisions. This means Life & Health is ahead of the rest of the group in developing data

capabilities. We are using our expertise across the whole of the group to raise the level of awareness
and capability in data warehousing.”