Capgemini Bags £40m To Provide IT And Dev Support For The UK's Financial Services Compensation Scheme

Global consultancy-cum-IT services outfit Capgemini has won a £40m contract from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) to provide IT and developer support to its new business strategy.

Anyone lucky enough to get a payout for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) would have done so through the FSCS, which is the industry-funded body that manages claims against banks, insurers and pension providers.

As separate contracts for IT support and software development come to a close, the FSCS said it was on the hunt for a new supplier to support "a new strategy for the 2020s and an ambitious programme to transform the way in which we serve our customers", according to the award notice.

Capgemini seemed to fit the bill. On its to-do list is a mission to "accelerate implementation, time to value and confidence behind technology acquisition to support our transformation programme", the document said.

It is also expected to "evolve the skills and capabilities of the CIO Function and across FSCS". Lest we forget, evolution is a process in which small improvements are built on the corpses of our ancestors, although in business jargon it may have acquired other meanings such as simply "change" or "improvement".

Regardless, Capgemini is also expected to reduce the total costs of ownership of IT and access additional resources to deliver improvements to the business.

In the future, the FSCS wants Capgemini to help "exploit the benefits of a cloud-based environment" and may well replace its main claims technology platforms as part of its ongoing service transformation. Overall, it must first support the scheme's "desire to embrace, where appropriate, new innovative technologies".

But there are more pressing matters. From the beginning of the contract, Capgemini must support the software development life cycle, offer people and resources, and manage hardware and software, including Microsoft Azure and Office 365.

"In order to deliver FSCS' strategic vision, we recognise there are areas of our technology that require transformation," the contract notice said. "We expect the transformation to start when the contract starts, and the initial phases to be costed, but for each subsequent phase to be agreed and costed as we move through the transformation. Future services are areas of technology provision that might be moved into this contract over time but would be agreed on a case by case basis."

Capgemini looks set to partly replace a relationship with Cognizant, which was contracted in March 2017 to help enhance customer experience using digital technologies.

In a three-year deal, Cognizant was supposed to help simplify, modernise and further secure a broad range of FSCS systems and applications to meet the digital needs of customers, a press notice said at the time.

FSCS also has outsourcing arrangements in claims handling and assessment. In May 2018, it signed Capita for the former, in a deal worth £37m over 4.75 years. Earlier this year, it signed Deloitte to determine the evidence of claims and assess customer eligibility. ®