MUMBAI: Tata Consultancy Services signed a $690-million (Rs 4,400-crore), 10-year deal with M&G Prudential, the UK and European savings and investments business unit of Prudential. This is the third large insurance contract won by India’s top IT services company in the past four months, signalling a steady turnaround in the insurance platform.The agreement covers more than 4 million customer policies. TCS said it will digitally transform M&G Prudential’s business and deliver enhanced service to its customers in the UK.“This kind of deal pipeline in the life &pension business will continue and there will be more opportunities that we will be looking at near future," said Suresh Muthuswami, president, TCS. “I cannot comment on whether we will be signing deals every quarter, but TCS will be aggressively going after this (opportunity in the insurance sector). We will be looking at this very seriously in all markets.”He said its software product TCS BaNCS will now be servicing 35 million policies, becoming the largest single platform in the life and pension industry.Last week, TCS signed a $2-billionplus deal —its largest ever — with Transamerica, marking the Indian outsourcing leader’s entry into the highly specialised US third-party insurance administration business. In September, TCS signed a new 15-year business agreement with Scottish Widows, the life insurance and pensions business of the Llyods Banking Group. These three large deals totalled $4 billion in value.“Over the past three to four quarters, the company has been talking about a deal pipeline in the insurance side. It is now slowly seeing conversion,” said Girish Pai, an analyst with Nirmal Bang. “All the deals have been platform deals. In the initial life of the platform, business is not as profitable as when the company adds more tenants.”Under the latest deal, the administration of more than 4-million life and pensions contracts will move to TCS from Prudential’s incumbent business partner, Capita. TCS subsidiary Diligenta, regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, will absorb 1,100 jobs from Capita in the UK and another 700 in India.Nirmal Bang’s Pai said margins may take a hit initially with transfer of people, but once business settles down, margins will expand. “TCS is getting trained people and people with domain knowledge. They are rebadging a fairly large number of people. It seems like the protectionist environment in the UK and USA is playing a role here,” he said.For the Transamerica deal, TCS will make job offers to 2,200 of its employees. It will also offer employment to 1,000 staff at Lloyds Banking Group’s insurance division.However, the company said the protectionist wave in the Western countries has nothing to do with the rebadging. “The deals have onsite and offsite component. Some of these people, they bring in industry expertise plus knowledge of the client. We are combining them to provide exponential value to customers. The number of people added are pale in comparison to deal sizes,” said TCS’ Muthuswami.It will also take on 180 full-time employees in London, Reading and Craigforth from M&G Prudential as it will assume responsibility for the operation of some of Prudential’s internal IT infrastructure to help deliver greater flexibility in providing services to businesses within the Prudential Group. This move will enable Prudential to focus efficiently on its digital transformation.“We will propel this digital transformation through TCS’ continuous investments in digital and technology services. We will also bring the combined strength and capabilities of our deep domain expertise in BFSI and TCS’ strong record of managed policy administration in the UK life and pension industry,” TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said.