Throwback Thursday: Friends Provident goes online
Insurance Post’s Throwback Thursday steps back in time to April 1976 to remind you what was going on this week in insurance history when Friends Provident came up with an innovative solution to rapid growth.
22 April 1976: Friends Provident installs real-time network
Friends Provident bosses decided the solution to the problems arising from a rapid uptick in new business was to go “on-line”.
“Real-time” computing technology that was superseding “batch processing” installations, which involve the transcription of information on to forms and then onto punched cards, was seen as the future by Friends Provident half a century ago.
Post reported the new techniques employed “television style terminals” which could be located at any geographical point and have keyboards and printers that allow information to be extracted from a central computer at any time.
Friends Provident eventually became part of Aviva in 2015.
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