NEWS ROOM

Allianz Worldwide Care Selects Thunderhead NOW to Improve Flexibility, Customization and Delivery of Its Client Communications

Leading international health insurer now has an important tool to support business agility through streamlining and automating the fast creation and delivery of its client communications using the Thunderhead NOW platform

London, UK - 02 September, 2009

Thunderhead, recognized innovators in document automation and multi-channel communications solutions, today announced that Allianz Worldwide Care has selected the Thunderhead NOW platform to create, produce and manage its multi-channel client communications.

As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Allianz Group, Allianz Worldwide Care specializes in providing international health insurance to employees, individuals and their dependants, wherever they are in the world.  Clients are provided with a flexible range of health insurance products, market-leading service levels and medical support from its team of in-house and regionally based doctors and nurses.

Allianz Worldwide Care selected Thunderhead to replace its existing in-house system in part due to Thunderhead’s unique business user control and its proven track record in the market.  With Allianz Worldwide Care’s commitment to ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction, Thunderhead will enable the company to maintain its ability to deliver superior customer service by providing a flexible, scalable multi-channel customer communications solution for creating and delivering customer correspondence in a more seamless and efficient manner. For a company which currently provides policy documents and supporting correspondence in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian, with additional languages planned in the near future, this is an important tool.

“To support our continuing focus on delivering service excellence, we believe that Thunderhead NOW is the solution best placed to meet the needs of our business today and in the future,” stated James Carroll, CIO, Allianz Worldwide Care.  “The Thunderhead NOW platform will provide our business users with a communications tool that is quick, easy to use and very flexible, enabling them to take ownership of the end-to-end client communications process without having to rely on IT to change and manage document content.  This will help to make us more efficient as an organization, remove resource bottlenecks and enable our IT staff to focus on core strategic projects.”

“We are delighted that Allianz Worldwide Care has selected Thunderhead to improve its customer communications process,” commented Thunderhead CEO, Glen Manchester.  “As an XML-based solution designed around the needs of business users, Thunderhead NOW is inherently able to produce highly personalized and accurate customer communications for any delivery channel and will help Allianz Worldwide Care move towards a more paperless communications process in order to deliver a fast, efficient and personal service to their customer base.”

About Allianz Worldwide Care
Allianz Worldwide Care specializes in providing international health insurance for employees, individuals and their dependants. From a range of in-patient, out-patient and dental benefits, clients can create a comprehensive international healthcare plan that suits their needs, including both long-term and short-term assignments.

As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Allianz Group, the company is able to draw on the resources and expertise of one of the world’s leading insurers and financial services providers. Allianz Worldwide Care is the only international health insurance provider to offer a 48-hour turnaround on submitted medical claims under its “Clear to Zero” claims handling initiative. With a 95% client retention rate and a customer base that includes many of the European Fortune 500 companies, Allianz Worldwide Care continues to build a reputation for service excellence in international healthcare.

Allianz ranks number 20 in the Fortune Global 500 (and number 8 in Europe’s Top 50). The Allianz Group insures almost half of all Fortune Global 500 companies. While the Standard & Poor's rating for Allianz is "AA", Allianz Worldwide Care has been assigned an "A" rating in its own right.