UK insurance giant Prudential has taken legal action against IT
supplier Unisys and is seeking more than £12 million in damages
after the alleged failure of an IT project, according to CW360, the
on-line edition of Computer Weekly. Prudential claims that it has
lost millions of pounds due to the supplier’s “failures and
inabilities to perform its obligations.”
The project, called “Unite”, involved a system designed to
enable Prudential sales agents in Europe to process orders for
insurance policies and pensions via the internet in real time. It
was based on the Unisure software package, supplied by Unisys.
It appears that Prudential terminated the software contract with
its supplier in September 2001 due to “failures”. The insurance
company now claims that it had to enact a contingency plan which
involved part-manual processing of thousands of orders and that it
was left with no option but to built new systems using in-house
resources. Negotiations over a settlement between the two sides
failed.
CW360.com reports that Prudential’s claim could total more than
£15 million. A date for a hearing has not been set yet.
