Sherwood International Reports Mid-Year 2002 Gains

Global insurance technology solutions specialist Sherwood International, based in the U.K., announced it has bucked the industry trend by posting encouraging half-year interim results, despite universally difficult market conditions. At mid-year the company reported 125 percent new license growth compared to last year, with 51 percent of the 3.5 million Pound Sterling revenues comprising new business deals.

The company said the results were driven by the strength and expertise of its management team. During the first half-year, the management took prompt action to identify and eradicate surplus costs, and continued to invest in product development strategy to meet changing market requirements.

A key focus was to strengthen the global sales force, a move that has enabled Sherwood to deliver heartening results in a difficult market and has positioned the group to take advantage of sector recovery in the longer term, keeping in line with its ambition to become the number two provider of software and services to the global insurance market.

Sherwood said it added a number of key blue-chip clients in the past six months, including:

*Axa Insurance signed a major agreement to take on Procede, Sherwood’s reinsurance solution, to increase efficiencies in its reinsurance and recoveries business;

*A second leading financial services institution also signed up for a significant implementation of Procede;

*Nationwide Building Society signed a contract for an XML front-end to Progen2, Sherwood’s insurance policy administration solution;

*U.K. DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) signed an agreement for additional application development and maintenance services;

*SSQ General Insurance Inc., a Quebec-based Property and Casualty insurance provider, entered into a multimillion-dollar license and implementation agreement to use Sherwood’s FrontTier processing and workflow management application and ProCede reinsurance solutions to increase business process efficiencies and reduce insurance processing costs;

*Further contract wins were announced with North American Vanlines Inc., Combined Specialty Insurance Group and Northwestern Mutual in the North American marketplace.