CSC Wins Contract With Chinese InsurerCSC Wins Contract With Chinese Insurer

IT services vendor Computer Sciences Corp. said Thursday that it has won a $17.6 million software and services contract from China's second-largest property and casualty insurer.

Under the five-year deal, CSC will provide China Pacific Property Insurance Co. with insurance-administration software and related services. CSC will replace the insurer's existing system with its Web-based, FutureFirst application. China Pacific will use the software to automate a number of business processes, including customer service, billing and collection, underwriting, and claims management.

All told, China Pacific will use FutureFirst to administer more than 13 million policies. CSC also will provide support services around the software. Officials from CSC and China Pacific were not immediately available for comment.

As China's economy grows, an increasing number of Western services companies are targeting the country as their next big growth market for IT and business-process-outsourcing offerings. Accenture, BearingPoint, and IBM are among the companies actively pushing into the country. Indian services providers, such as Cognizant Technology Solutions and Satyam Computer Services, are also joining the rush.

China also has its own nascent outsourcing industry that provides IT and BPO services to companies from other countries. About 60% of outsourcing contracts in China are from customers in Japan, according to officials at Beijing's Municipal Science and Technology Commission, with 15% from the United States and 10% from Europe.