MILLIMAN Federated identity manager opens new channels

MILLIMAN
Federated identity manager opens new channels
and drives increased revenues for Milliman
AT-A-GLANCE
Key Requirements
–– Seamless system allowing partners
with distinct identities to securely
present information to users
–– Solution that provides portable
user identity and entitlements
between multiple organizations
Solution
–– Deployed identity federation
system that delivers uniform access
while preserving partner brands
and logos
–– Proven information protection via
secure user name and password
login
–– Single sign-on (SSO) is easy to use
and update
Results
–– Quickly implemented federations
with partners
–– Realized 71 percent annual growth
within one year
“We saw the opportunity to provide sophisticated back-office
application support to organizations that were evaluating whether
to build their own infrastructure or to partner with us to take
advantage of our proven technology and applications. This
business opportunity would require the ability to safely and costeffectively share trusted online identities so that plan participants
could quickly and easily access information on their accounts.”
CRAIG BURMA, PRINCIPAL AND DIRECTOR, MILLIMAN BENEFITS RESOURCE CENTER
Milliman is a firm of consultants and actuaries serving a full spectrum of
business, governmental, and financial organizations. Founded in 1947,
the firm has 31 offices in the United States as well as offices in Bermuda,
Gurgaon, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan, São Paulo,
Seoul, and Tokyo. Milliman is a founding member of Milliman Global,
a worldwide organization of consulting and actuarial firms.
KEY REQUIREMENTS
Since 1994, Milliman has provided outsourced retirement-plan administration, delivered on
its internally developed Retirement Plan Administration System (RPAS). In 2005, Milliman
opened up a new distribution channel. Milliman previously provided services through a
direct channel to retirement-plan administrators, and participants in these plans would
access the Milliman website to access their account information. Now, in addition to offering
its services directly, Milliman offers its services indirectly through new distribution partners.
Milliman recognized that major partners required the ability to present account information
under their own brand identities. Company executives evaluated alternatives for delivering a
seamless user experience to plan participants under the logos and identities of Milliman’s
distribution partners. They concluded that identity federation was the perfect solution.
Identity federation is defined as the standards, technologies, and agreements that make
a user identity and related entitlements portable between two or more organizations.
“We quickly realized we needed a uniform method of federating identities, and our
research led us to RSA® Federated Identity Manager,” said Craig Burma, principal and
director. “It was a priority for us to select a proven solution from an established vendor,
and we also needed professional services expertise to help us design and implement
federated identity programs with leading partners.”
CUSTOMER
PROFILE
SOLUTION
RSA Federated Identity Manager complemented Milliman’s direct sales efforts to fuel
its channel expansion by enabling its plan participants to access their retirement
information quickly and securely under the brand identities of partners.
“We quickly realized we
needed a uniform method
of federating identities, and
our research led us to RSA
Federated Identity Manager.
It was a priority for us to
select a proven solution from
an established vendor, and
we also needed professional
services expertise to help
us design and implement
federated identity programs
with leading partners.”
CRAIG BURMA, PRINCIPAL AND DIRECTOR
Milliman signed agreements with a top-ten brokerage firm and a top-ten banking
institution to federate identities and provide record keeping and administration support
for their defined-benefit pension plans. Plan participants would be able to log into the
sites of these firms by keying-in a user name and password, and they would be able to
seamlessly access their retirement information that would be presented with the logos
and identities of Milliman’s partners. End users would benefit from single sign-on (SSO)
and easy access to updated, personalized information and powerful retirement-planning
calculators and tools.
A seamless user experience had different meaning for Milliman’s first two RPAS
distribution partners. Members of RSA Professional Services provided design and
implementation support to satisfy the needs of both partners. When an authorized user
logs into the site of the initial brokerage partner and requests information on his/her
defined benefit plan, this site asserts that the request is coming from a trusted individual,
and RPAS delivers the requested data for display within a browser window of the partner.
The initial banking institution partner has a different implementation and it “white
labels” the RPAS website under its own branding. When an authorized user on this site
requests information on his/her defined-benefit plan, RSA Federated Identity Manager
accepts valid security assertion markup language (SAML) assertions and pulls up the
retirement information, which is presented in a partner-labeled browser window. While
the brokerage partner pulls the data from RPAS, the banking partner’s plan participants
view a partner-branded web page presented by Milliman servers.
RESULTS
CONTACT US
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solve your business and IT challenges
contact your local representative or
authorized reseller – or visit us at
www.RSA.com
Within just a year of implementation, Milliman increased the number of plan participants
using its RPAS system to more than 600,000. Milliman’s first RPAS brokerage partner
brought approximately 260,000 participants through 17 retirement plans, and its first
RPAS banking institution partner brought approximately 10,000 plan participants through
12 retirement plans.
“The future is bright for us because RSA Federated Identity Manager allows Milliman to
quickly and profitably build critical mass in record-keeping for retirement plans,” said
Burma. “In fact, our first brokerage partner recently signed up the retirement plan of a
major retailer, which should result in over a million new plan participants added over
the next five years.”
Milliman looks forward to growth from its existing partners as well as to the potential for
growth from future partners. According to Burma, “RSA Federated Identity Manager has
allowed us to open up a new sales channel through current partners and possible future
partners. We believe that financial advisors affiliated with our initial financial-services
partners will add new plans to our systems, and we hope to develop new partnerships
with other financial-services institutions to deliver value-added services and the security
and convenience of SSO and federated identity management.”
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