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"Real-time insurance" leverages new technologies to wring inefficiencies out of small commercial new business transactions
Technology forecaster and strategist Daniel Burrus declared during his general session presentation at the ACORD Technology Conference '99 that, "time is the currency of the new economy." It's a new slant on the old adage, time is money. But in light of a recent announcement by Applied Systems and The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., the insurance industry can now leverage time with technology and in doing so, can eliminate the speed limits that "batch, store and forward" technology imposes. Data can now travel at "warp" speed.
Warp, in this context, isn't the speed at which the characters of "Star Trek" travel. It's an Internet-based data transport product developed by Applied Systems, a provider of automation software, systems and services to the independent property/casualty market. This data transport mechanism links the agency and the company together to enable a seamless business-tobusiness transaction using the Internet as the backbone.
But traveling at warp speed isn't enough. You need to have a destination. In this case it's The Hartford, which is able to integrate into its legacy systems data coming from a variety of external systems, providing real-time processing.
Independent agents today spend a significant amount of time waiting for commercial policies to be rated and issued. But in the area of small commercial, "touching" the account numerous times erodes the already slim profit margins even more. Consider this typical scenario: the agency enters the data into its agency management system, submits the quote request, issues a binder, prepares the binder billing, then reverses the binder billing once the policy is received and finally issues the invoice for the actual premium.
All these "touches" cost monevand time.
However, the waiting game may be over, thanks to the efforts of Applied and The Hartford. These two long-time interface partners, using the latest technologies: ACORD ObjX, XML, WinDNAfs and the Internet, demonstrated "real-time insurance" at the ACORD Conference. Three screens depicted the agency desktop and the carrier mainframe quote and issuance system. WinTAM was on one screen, Vision on another, and the Hartford stag-its Spectrum BOP system-on the third. But you had to watch closely. To fully appreciate the real-time rating and...