Ace handles huge global IT challenge through outsourcing.

Ace Ltd.'s information-technology challenges came to the forefront in early 1999, after it had completed a $3.6 billion acquisition of the international and domestic property and casualty business of Cigna Corp.

"We had a choice of allowing the company we bought to run the IT or of outsourcing very quickly," said William Siegle, chief information officer of Ace INA. "It was a gutsy move to outsource that much, but we did it because we had to." He added that Ace could have built its IT system "from scratch" but that outsourcing "was a statement that we're an underwriting company."

At the time, Bermuda-based Ace was 15 years old. It had begun with six employees and two insurance products. Today, it has more than 8,000 employees working in nearly 50 countries.

The acquisition of 210-year-old Cigna P&C was the largest of several purchases from 1996 to 2000 that allowed Ace to grow rapidly. Beginning in 2001, the company grew from within. Siegle said that in the second quarter this year, Ace's combined ratio was 91.7. Ace now has assets of $46.6 billion, and $8.2 billion of shareholder equity.

Such rapid expansion posed staggering IT challenges for upstart Ace and for Siegle, who in July 1999 took charge of technology for Ace INNs domestic and international property, casualty and health businesses.