Technical Clarification

Clarifications

Please clarify whether the bidder will have cover all expenses of SUD team for client visit during the

technical bid evaluation?

Vendor will have to arrange local conveyance for the meeting and facilitate the meeting other

expenses will be borne by SUD

Is it manadatory that the bidder and the OEM should have registered profit in at least one of the

last three years? Yes

Can the OEM submit the P/L and balance sheet statement for their office in the US? Yes

Will star Union team get into a NDA for enabling the Bidder/OEM share confidential information

about the projects which is mandatory as per section 3.3 of the RFP document. Yes. At this stage

you can share the contact details( Fax,e-mail-ids,phone nos.) for similar projects in case PO details

cannot be shared due to confidentiality clause/legal or other reasons

Does star union has a approval process in place for mass movement of agents to a new hireachy?

We would have a process in place with authorization levels

Please clarify how would the targets would be passed to proposed channel management system

and is entire target management is the expectation of SUD team then please explain the entire

process and the expectation?

Targets are rolled up to the next supervisory level . The AM on the bancassurance side for example

would have a target based upon his salary level etc. Please note that the targets of AM do not only

depend on salary levels. It is a combination of many factors which may change from year to year

depending upon the strategy of the company. Broadly it is dependent upon the productivity level of

type of branches handled by the AM . It may therefore change as and when the no of branches are

added or reduced from the said AM and a BM will have his target as the sum of the AMs reporting

to him. All channels have similar arrangements.

Please share the KYC norms document to have more clarity? KYC norms are standard across the

industry.

They are Education Certificate,DOB Certificate,Address Proof,PAN CardColor photograph and Bank

A/c No.

Please clarify whether star union team wants a approval workflow for onboarding of agents? We

would prefer one

Please clarify on the point that SUD team would like to have facility to store free form notes on an

agent with a follow up facility?

This is to faciliatate follow/up on some requirements which may be entered as free text instead of

standard requirement. Standard/mandatory requirement normally stop further processing for the

transaction for the agent or it may be a non-standard requirement specific to the agent/situation

and not part of standard template

Please explain the point that the system should have a ability to record training activity and what is

the expectation on terms of system capable to record examination results for producers and please

let us know from which systems we need integrate to able to display examination results for

producers? The following fields are needed for training and examination ( Please refer sheet 1) No

system integration is needed only uploads would be required

Please provide more information on the point that application process mass transfers in both on-line

and batch mode and please explain the expectation? Facility should be there for processing bulk

and individual reallocation of producers from one supervisor to another

Please provide more information on the point system store licensing data with expiry dates and

configurable reminder date? System should be capable of storing license date with multiple

reminders/alerts possible at configurable time periods eg. 15 days before expiry, 30 days before

expiry,45 days before expiry etc. The system should be able to record license termination and re-

instatement history.

Please provide more information on the point that whether the system store license record include

license types,sponsorship and grace period? Please refer to various license types allowed by IRDA,

sponsership means organization sponsoring the license in case of specified persons/producers

belonging to a corporate agent.

Please provide more information on the point that the license validation on secondary compensation

if required? For agents we need to ensure that his license is in-force before he can be paid

secondary commission. Therefore before paying secondary commission/renewal commission it has

to be checked that the agency license is in-force. Secondly if the agency license has been in force

for 5 continuous years then under Sec. 45 he is entitled to renewal commission

Please provide more information on the point that does the application take care of cases where

license has expired? It means we want to know how the proposed system handles commission

payments ( by way of holds and accounting ) in cases where license has expired at the time of

payment of renewal/other commisssion. It may happen that the payment would have to be made

after sometime when license is renewed

Please provide more information of primary and secondary comission? Primary commission is the

1st commission paid on policy procurement to the producer/agent. Secondary commission may

comprise of bonus commisssion and renewal commission based on the policy procured being in-

force i.e commission based on receipt of renewal commission or some such condition

Please provide more information on the point that does vendor application support complicated UL

products and funds coverage? Self explanatory i.e application should be able to support calculations

for all products being sold in the Indian market

Please provide more information on the point that Can the rate setting insertions and updates be

audited? We would need audit trails if changes are made in commission rates regarding who has

made the changes when it was made and what changes were done

Please provide more information on the point that Does the annualization process track the paid vs.

earned amounts? And have a configurable settle-up by product? Annualization feature normally

entails payment of commission in advance for the year irrespective of mode of premium payment.

Therefore we have to track paid amount v/s the earned commission which is commission for the

amount of premium recd. by the insurer. Similarly settle-up provisions for commissions are currently

not in India but are widely prevalent in other geographies. In the Indian context we also have

annualization where commission below a certain amount for each agent is paid as annual

instalment as the amount is so less for the month to justify processing each month and therefore

we wait for his total commission earnings to cross a certain threshold before we pay his commission

Please provide more information on the point that Can the annualization of commission be set as a

default? and also on the point Are Cap Amounts for Annualization preferences determined by set

amounts and percentages? Please refer to previous answer

Please provide more information on the point the application should support compensation vesting?

Refer below

please provide more information on the point that Can vesting rules be created at an individual level

in the system?

Vesting is Commissions paid to an agent regardless of whether they still work for the insurer, based

on renewal business. This is vesting of renewal commission and the system should have the

capability to configure the same at an individual level

Please provide more information on the point that Does the application allow compensation to be

generated for expense allowances, service fees and trailer fees and also please clarify as to how

these transactions would be passed to channel management system? The system should have a

facility to at least record these data manually and do some calculation based on production figures

Please provide more information on the point that Does it have provision to handle loan payments

and interest calculations? Loans and advances are typically granted to the field force system should

be able to manage the same in terms of administration of the same

Please provide more information on the point that Can production objectives be setup and

compared against actual for various compensation types and level? We should be able to compare

targets set with achievement for various periods during the year for the field force

Please provide more information on the point that Can different channels be configured for different

seasonality of targets? Self explanatory we want that target setting should be configurable at

channel level also

Please provide more information as to how sud life wants to make comission payment to the

nominee of the deceased agent? We expect a facility of commission redirect which could be

configured for nominee

Please provide more information on the point that Can TDS be calculated based on different

certificates (for different exemption limits) issued by Income Tax Department to individual agents?

IT department sometimes gives partial exemption to agents in terms of income tax eg. TDS not to

be deducted till say Rs. 15000. System should be able to handle such cases

please provide more information on the point that Does the application allow processed financial

activity to be reversed? Self explanatory we should be able to reverse processed transactions at

least at a global level and preferably at individual level

Please provide more information on the point that Does the application allow for interest charging

for debit balances/advances? The application should have a configurable facility to charge

simple/compound interest or achieve the same via a rate table on advances to field force

please provide more information on the point that Does the application support Debt rules by

channels, calculation methods and a breakdown by hierarchy using the existing rate maintenance

setup? Refer to the previous channel with the added functionality that the debt recovery should be

configurable at channel level and at various hierarchy levels

Please provide more information on the point that Does your application support Debt roll-ups and

Debt Refinancing rules? Debt Roll-up & refinancing refer to debt of a reportee to be rolled-up to his

superior for recovery purpose should the reportee leave the system or due to any other reason.

Rules to be set up in such cases regarding recovery and interest rate etc. would be debt refinancing

rules

Please provide more information on the point that Is the display of your Balance and Production

records configurable by a user? We would like to have the display as a configurable item which can

be managed by us regarding the details we want to see on the screen

Please provide expectation on the point that Does your application generate all commission

accounting entries? The sub-ledger for accounting would be generated in the system so that any

entry can be accounted for in a proper manner from an accounting perspective

Please provide more information on the point that Is there a facility to account for earned vs. paid

accounting? Whenever an insurance company pays commission in advance then an accounting

entry is passed and a paid account is debited. As and when the renewal premium is received an

earned commission entry is passed where paid account is credited and earned account is debited

Please explain the point that Does the application able to allow for Cheque, Transfer to another

producer and/or EFT payouts? Self explanatory system should be able to support various payout

methods by generating feeds or faciliate printing in case of cheque printing

Please provide more information on the point Does it support setup for this international program

like MDRT, COT and TOT and track the persons participating? We should be able to configure

qualifying conditions for such programs and support the same with reminders,alerts etc. as he

nears qualifying criteria or if he is in danger of losing his qualification

Please provide expectation on the point that Does the application produce notifications for

events/transactions occurring in the system, either manually or through an interface? System

should be able to integrate with MS exchange/SMS platforms or should have internal alert system

by way of reports etc. for configured events

Please provide more information on the point that generating letters for performance review? We

have end of month/ quarter/yearly reviews based on targets and achievement based on business

figures. The system should have the facility where the data can be populated from the system on

the standard template to generate performance review for the field force

Please provide more information on the point that Does the solution offer pre-built calculations on

the data? For example, average, attainment, variance etc. We would like the system to help in

analysis of business figures through forecasting by way of assumptions of growth in some criteria or

on trend .simple mathematical functions as mentioned above can also be used to analyze all

performance data

Please provide more information on the point that Does the solution provide planning capability?

I.e. Budgets and Forecasts We expect the system to support budgeting exercise by utilizing data

present in the system eg: by analysis of performance of agents and recruitment data it could help

to budget for business figures

Please provide more information on the point that Is the user interface of the application

customizable by each user? Self explanatory eg. Also given during pre-bid meeting

Please provide more information on the point that Can wild card searches be used to filter on

information/data? System should provide facility to match data/string by giving wild card search

eg: if you recall only a few alphanumeric characters then using them in combination with '*' should

give probable matches

Please provide more information on the point thatDoes your application provide reminders on set

dates as requested? System should allow for reminders to be set on specific dates for a desired set

of events

please provide more information on the point that The Bidder shall provide licensed software for all

software products, whether developed by it or acquired from others. The Bidder shall also indemnify

SUD Life against any levies / penalties on account of any default in this regard. We expect all

softwares if any relating to the consortium or procured by you on our behalf to be licensed

software; therefore any violation in the nature of unlicensed software procured by you and used by

us as a result of this engagement should it be detected and fines levied on SUD by any authority

the consortium shall imdemnify us for the same. These terms are general and in this engagement

since operating software and other hardware are being procured by us directly there is remote

possibility of the same occuring

Please clarfy on the point that If and when the bidder updates its software to fix some product level

bugs or incorporates any functionality as per regulatory and business changes the same should be

provided to SUD free of cost. What we mean is that there shall not be any extra cost other than

AMC for regular upgrades or for any defects in the product. For customization done at our instance

we will pay as per the agreement with the vendor

Please clarify on the point that Does the product support WebSphere MQ? We would like to know

which middleware is supported for integration MQ series, Websphere etc

Is the workflow module a part of the requirement of Star Union? It is preferred

Preliminary Questions

1.       General Question: Just to help us understand the complexity involved, can you please let us

know the numbers of channels that form your distribution network and what are they? Right now

we have bancassurance , tied agency and direct sale by our staff, brokers as corporate agents and

direct web selling. We propose to utilize all permitted channels for distribution.

2.       General Question: Can we get the data volume in the context of data migration? You can

assume data between 600 MB to 1GB

3.       General Question: How do the channel hierarchies differ from each other, if any? For

traditional agency we have all the field force within our system whereas for bancassurance we have

specified persons acting as agents who are bank employees so we have to interact with bank

hierarchy we have separate reporting hierarchy for the channels

4.       General Question: How does your corporate hierarchy interact with the partner hierarchy

across different channels? Yes we have links across bancassurance hierarchy with our counterparts

in SUD and targets are assigned at each level in our hierarchy to be achieved with the help of

counterparts in bank hierarchy

5.       General Question: Provide more details on data archiving. How long the data need to be

maintained for transactional purpose and analytics purpose. For transactional purpose 1 year for

analytics purpose 5 years

6.       General Question: Para 2 at the Tender Notice (page 2) of the RFP doc states:

“The purpose of this RFP is to invite proposals from Bidders for procurement, installation and

commissioning of Channel Management Solution at identified locations of Star Union Dai-ichi Life

Insurance (SUD LIFE). Detailed functional specifications of the total solution have been given in

section 2 and technical, company details and commercials are present in attachments provided in

excel format with this document. The proposed Channel Management Solution comprises of the

following:”

We did not find any excel documents embedded to the Tender document (pdf document) or

available at the SUD website. Do you provide any excel documents for submitting our responses?

They have been merged in single pdf document available in website.

7.       General Question: Section 3 - Instructions to Vendors. There is a reference to Form 3.

Form 3 format is not available in the RFP PDF document. Please read it as „Annexure-3‟

8. General Questions: 3.1.3. Page 4 “The SUD LIFE reserves the right to inspect such

installation/s while evaluating the Technical Bid. The Bidder should obtain permissions and bear all

the expenses in this regard”. We will be able to organize conference calls or site visits depending

upon client locations and approval. Please clarify any other support required. No other support

required. Question has been answered elsewhere.

9.       General Questions: Incidental Services Page 10 e: Porting with any other OS at future date

if the need arises: Needs clarification as to how to include this in the price bid. Not to be included

10.   General Questions: Page 20, 13.5 (Maintenance Services)  & Page 21 (Liquidity Damages):

Overlapping clauses. Request for clarification. One applies in case of maintenance the other when

the system cannot be delivered and therefore represents liquidated damages

11.   Ref: Requirement 6 in 1.1 - Hierarchy management; what data constitutes of a typical contract

for a producer? What would be differences in data across many contracts associated to one agent?

Details about the contract like contract no., product and term, any rider information, branch ,

premium, client-id, channel-id and other such fields. Normally there would be no difference as the

type of data would be the same

12.   Ref: Requirement 7 in 1.1 - Hierarchy management; can you please give us typical scenarios

for multiple Reporting Hierarchies and multiple concurrent Compensation Hierarchies?

Vendors are expected to know the same. By multiple reporting hierarchies we mean reporting

hierarchy based on region or organization and another hierarchy based on channel. This is a typical

scenario in bancassurance model. Currently we have separate targets for channel s which converge

at region level.

13.   Ref: Requirement 10 in 1.1 - Hierarchy management; can you please give us a typical scenario

of mass movement of agents to new hierarchies?

A typical example would be a creation of an extra layer in the reporting hierarchy or shifting to a

newly created channel

14.   Ref: Requirement 11 in 1.1 - Hierarchy management; can you provide us a typical outlay of

incentive plan for no. of branches based targets? What roles participate in this target achievement

to get incentives?

Eg A bank branch may be de-allocated from one manager and given to another manager. Targets

are normally assigned to an AM and he is allocated 4-6 branches of bank in bancassurance channel

to achieve the allotted target. AMs target roll-up to the next hierarchy who may have a no. of AMs

reporting to him. Typically an AM handles 4-6 branches of bancassurance partners and therefore

many times there is re-alignment of branches due to him getting transferred or leaving the system.

15. Ref: Requirement 1 and 3 in 1.2 – Agency on-boarding; what are the various agent types

across all channels and what are differences in data capture and or related functionality?

We expect agency on-boarding process for tied agents and career agents; for specified persons we

only require data upload to load their details

16. Ref: Requirement 2 in 1.2 – Agency on-boarding; are there any differences in capture of agent

data for agents belonging to different channels such as tied channel and career agent channel or

Agent serving via Partner Channel? Yes the entire on-boarding process will be applicable for tied

and career agency for partner agent please refer to previous answer

17. Ref: Requirement 12 in 1.2 – Agency on-boarding; what is the application process being

referred to as „mass transfers of both online and batch mode‟ in agency-on-boarding with respect to

transfer within hierarchy or on-boarding of new agents to an existing hierarchy?

Transfer of agents as a result of change of reporting authority

18.   Ref: Requirement 3 and 5 in 2.1 - Rate Setup/Processing; what are the different secondary

compensation types in use? What parameters drive definition of secondary compensation?

We currently only pay renewal commission as secondary commission

19.   Ref: Requirement 20 in 2.1 - Rate Setup/Processing; what are typical compensation vesting

options that are currently used by your company? What additional benefits are added to the vested

compensation?

Please refer to answer given in a different sheet. No additional benefits are added

20.   Ref: Requirement 25 in 2.1 - Rate Setup/Processing; what are various other basis types used,

apart from fixed and variables amounts?

This is a future provision and there are many basis types prevalent in the industry eg: on the basis

of total revenue generated etc.

21.   Ref: Requirement 27 in 2.1 - Rate Setup/Processing; what are all the possible roles (multiple)

that a producer can have and what different compensation types are applicable for such producers?

Eg :He may be the insured person or could have been an agent earlier and now joined as area

manager

22.   Ref: Requirement 11, 12 and 14 in 2.2 - Commission Accounting and Processing; what

different financial re-directs you would like to have? Is this requirement in the context of mergers

and acquisitions for transfer of book of business?

Yes primarily for that but in the Indian context we could use the same for transferring business for

orphan policies

23.   Ref: Requirement 15 in 5.2 - Commission Analytics/Dashboards; can you specify the possible

multiple data sources from which the data need to be accepted and the interfacing with it?

Life Asia, Group system for policies in the context of analytics; for other requirements the question

has been answered in another query

24.   Ref: Requirement 16 in 5.2 - Commission Analytics/Dashboards; what are common data

structures required for data comparison and reporting? Example has been given in 16 only. For data

comparison normally we would compare current business figures with previous periods figures so

essentially production and commission figures would be required. Hierarchy data structure,

recruitment data of field force etc. are some other common data structures requiredLeagalDescription

Cl 5 Patent Rights?

The Bidder seeks to propose that since the Bidder is not the owner of the software, the Bidder will

pass through all the necessary recourse available from the software vendor for the infringement of

the software. The Bidder agrees to indemnify the client against any third party claim for

infringement of copyright or trade secrets with respect to services provided by the Bidder.

We suggest you enter into a back to back agreement with OEM partner for copyright/patent issues

CL.6.2 For the system & other software?

The bidder seeks deletion of the indemnity provisions.

We suggest you enter into a back to back agreement with OEM partner for copyright issues

CL.19 taxes and Duties?

The bidder seeks to propose that Client shall pay for all taxes in connection with this engagement 

including, but not limited to, sales, use, excise, value-added, goods and services, consumption, and

other similar taxes or duties. Each party shall be responsible for taxes based on its own net income,

employment taxes of its own employees.

CL.28 termination for default?

The bidder seeks to propose that a cure period of not less than 30 days should be provided to the

bidder to rectify any defects before the client exercises its right to terminate the contract. The

Bidder further seeks a reciprocal right to terminate the contract for any material breach by the

Client.

We are discussing the same with procurement team. Such issues can also be discussed at the

contracting stage

Cl 30 Limitation of liability?

Bidder seeks that the liability cap be capped at the contract value. Ten times the contract value is

an anomaly  to the market practice in India.

We are discussing the same with our Procurement team. Any updates shall be posted on the web-

site. TCC conditions can also be discussed during contracting stage if we find that the same vary

widely from the terms and conditions prevalant in the industry

Cl.33 Indemnity?

Bidder seeks for deletion of indemnity for patent infringement.

We suggest you discuss it with your OEM partner as though such incidents normally have not been

reported in the industry we cannot take this liability on us

Cl. 8 Insurance?

Is the insurance clause applicable in the current scenario?

No

RFP Queries

Response

It is mentioned in the RFP "The same should continue to be in successful operation for minimum

one project of similar or higher capacity in the last five years (at least in one Life Insurance

company compulsorily)." - We would like to know if we can remove the reference of Life Insurance

as the Channel Management is Line of Business Agnostic?

No we would like the vendor to have expertise in implementation of channel management in life

insurance company as we would believe the domain has certain unique characteristics

It is mentioned in the RFP "Does the system have a single client id to manage various relationships?

Can the system support “one to many” relationships between the agent personal information and

their contract data?" - Does this requirement refer to Single Customer View as available with MDM /

CRM Integration or an in-built single customer view of end customers attached to the agent /

broker?

This refers to the requirement that we want a client centric view within this application. So any

person will have a single client-id though he may be related to this clent-id in many ways eg. A

policy holder, an agent who later becomes an AM

What are all the Channels that are exoected to be part of Hierarchy Management - is it Agent /

Broker or does it also include, direct customer, Customer Service Representative for Cross / Up-Sell

and Bancassurance?

We want to manage our sales hierarchy within the organizationand its relationship with the bank

hierarchy

What are the internal and external integration points that are intended to be part of Agency On-

boarding - including License Validation, Credit Validation, Background Verification and Third-party

Services?

We would like integration with Life Asia/Group Asia and possibly with an email/SMS application for

agency on-boarding; other direct integration is not expected for agency on-boarding

What are the internal and external integration points that are intended to be part of Agency On-

boarding - including License Validation, Credit Validation, Background Verification and Third-party

Services?

As mentioned in the RFP we would like to have this functionality in the product but implementation

would not include commission calculation as the same would be done in Life Asia

Does SUD have a centralized commission processing and disbursement facility for whole India or

have decentralized commission facility at Branch / ?

Centralized

In case the answer is "yes" to decentralized commission calculation mentioned in the question

above - Does the requirement to transfer the commission to the servicing agent or transferred

agent in the other Branch / Region / State expected to online?

NA

Does the system require to track Bonus and Contest in terms of Cash or should it also track the

same that is distributed in kinds that are different than Cash?

Some contests have non-monetary rewards we would like to track to the extent that the application

would have upload facility for delivery details of these rewards

Does the web portal / security requirement include single-sign-on validation for agents etc. when

integrated with Agency / Broker / Bancassurance self-service portal?

Yes we would prefer it

Does SUD intend to implement and integrated CRM and MDM / ODS with the Channel Management

Solution and hence require readiness?

This questionis not relevant at this stage and not part of the RFP. We alreafy have a CRM solution

which has been partially implemented

Does SUD intend to implement and integrated CRM and MDM / ODS with the Channel Management

Solution and hence require readiness?

Yes

This clause states that both the bidder and OEM must be registering profits in at least one of the

last three years. Is it a restrictive clause or it be relaxed to include only one partner in the

consortium?

Yes

1. What are the applications/ systems to be integrated with the CMS?

2. How many applications/ systems need to be integrated?

3. What is the mode of integration with these applications/ systems?

4. What other feeds, apart from base commission, would flow from Life Asia?

5. Which data elements would constitute the feeds?

At present we would have our Life and Group systems( based on AS400 platform), our Finance

system( Sun GL) and our receipting system integrated in CMS. We currently have MQ series and

Biztalk which could be used for the same.Vendors can suggest different approaches based on their

experience in similar projects. No other feed is expected only syncing of data between CMS and LA

apart from commission feed is expected. Vendors are expected to know 8-10 fields that constitute a

typical commission feed .SMS/email solutions would be another integration point

What is the warranty period - 12 months from actual Go-Live date of the solution in SUD Life or 12

months from the date of acceptance of the software?

12 months from actual go-live date

What is the number of SUD Life's personnel who are required to be trained?

20 people

Supply of device drivers in case of change in operating environment in SUD - this service shall not

be covered under warranty and shall be chargeable?

It will be a chargeable service but the vendor will have to provide these services should the need

arise at a reasonable cost