Focus and Mastek focus on Life and Pensions

(By Anthony Miller – Tuesday 21st July 2009 8:30am). We don’t usually comment on ‘partnerships’, ‘strategic alliances’ and those sorts of things because as often as not they are barely worth the paper they are sometimes written on. But this morning’s news (see here) that one of the smaller India-based SIs, Mastek, is to integrate ‘Little British Battler’ Focus Solutions’ flagship focus:360 extranet product into its Elixir Life & Pensions (L&P) administration software, piqued our interest. And I shall tell you why.

Many of you will know that Mastek is the long-time offshore development partner of UK BPO leader, Capita (indeed Capita is one of Mastek’s biggest clients). Mastek has written the code for many of Capita’s large-scale BPO contracts, including the London Congestion Charge to name but one. More importantly, back in 2005 Capita opted to use Mastek’s Elixir product as the base for its new L&P BPO platform. The arrangement was extended in June last year. L&P is Capita’s fastest growing business line, generating revenues over £460m last year at 11% operating margin.

Focus is one of the few suppliers to the financial services sector that has seen a fair run recently (see Focus’ focus on financial services pays off), so if they are able to 'piggy-back' on Capita's Elixir platform, then this has to be even better news. I would imagine Capita will pick up on this point too. By the way, Mastek reports its FY results tomorow and Capita reports its interim results on Thursday. You will of course see our comments then.