Back in July last year, the Indian tech giant HCL purchased Liberata Financial Services – creating a new firm, HCL Insurance Business Services. That move appears to have paid off as HCL announced a new contract win today offering

That venture was also aimed at winning closed book business, and was interesting because TCS took on a 12-year contract to transform and manage the existing Pearl systems; Diligenta would then use that real experience of transforming one insurance company to pitch for similar business in the market.

It sounded like a great business plan three years ago, but a quick look at the Diligenta web site only shows a single client that has come on board since then.

That leads to a number of questions. Did Diligenta over-promise what they could deliver in the closed book area? Or, is it hard for them to pitch for work when they are already managing the Pearl account – would other insurance firms prefer to set up their own joint venture, or find their own tech supplier? Or was it just the downturn in economic activity in general over the past couple of years that prevented much investment in large-scale change programmes?

The HCL deal is a large deal. Not quite on the scale of Diligenta, but it positions HCL alongside TCS as having access to very large closed book system management in the UK insurance market. That’s disappointing for Diligenta, but exciting for those who would prefer some competition in the insurance technology market rather than having it all sewn up by a single super-supplier.

What’s interesting to observe regardless of this single contract win, is that both TCS and HCL are becoming significant employers of British staff working in the insurance industry, away from their own roots in the IT services space and offshoring. Bringing their combined expertise to the sector can only be a good thing and does start shifting perceptions of these brands as being less about ‘Indian tech’ and more about ‘global services’.