One advantage of being a startup is the leadership group has theopportunity to participate in high-level meetings to determine whatthe company hopes to accomplish in the long run, rather thanfiguring things out on the fly. In the case of Darwin ProfessionalUnderwriters, technology discussions centered on developingflexible solutions to support the specialty lines carrier'sbusiness needs, according to Bob Asensio, senior vice president andCIO for Darwin.

One of Darwin's strategies was to find a way for smallerbusiness to be conducted over the Internet and do more than policyissuance, preparation of documents, and rating, explains Asensio."We wanted to do things such as automate some of the underwritingactivity and risk selection for lines of business where this hasnever happened before," he says. "Our goals were broad."

Asensio knew there were new vendors doing policy administrationwith features some traditional solutions couldn't offer, herecalls. So, he sought a solution that would provide what hedescribes as the "basic plumbing" while offering Darwin the abilityto do a lot of its own configuration. With the premise that whatDarwin wanted was possible, Asensio started contacting vendors.OneShield and about a dozen other vendors were sent an RFP Asensiofelt was specific regarding the carrier's desire to be dynamic.

"We're always coming out with new products, and the way weapproach our producers is [the business] really is a work inprogress," he says. "We're not claiming we have the answer intechnology, but we keep trying. We listen to what our producers sayand try to make things better for them."

After a five-month selection process, Darwin chose OneShield butfollowed a nontraditional path, opting not to spend yearsdeveloping specifications its vendor would create, Asensio reports."We'll always be an evolving company that's looking to do things alittle differently," he says.

Flexibility is a tall order for technology solutions, Asensioremarks. "I was hoping for the best of both worlds," he says. "Ifyou look at it from the build-vs.-buy perspective, we bought abasic infrastructure that works. From the build side, we still hadthe ability to customize things. Our focus would be solely onimplementing those business requirements as opposed to implementingtechnical requirements."

As the name suggests, specialty lines insurance producesdifferent challenges for carriers. Asensio points out there are noISO standards or ACORD forms for those lines, and the productdefinitions are unique. "You can go to market with a differentproduct than any of your competitors," he says.

Because the products are changing, Asensio explains theunderwriting exposure also has a tendency to change from time totime. "For instance, if you're underwriting a professionalliability and a D&O for a public company, you are going to lookat certain data points," he says. "Over time, those data pointshave changed. At one point, you would look at things such as assetsand total revenue. Eventually market capitalization became a bigthing to look at."

Since Darwin is a startup, the policy administration systembecame the linchpin for standardizing all of the carrier'stechnology, notes Asensio. OneShield is an Oracle application, soDarwin runs Oracle and IBM WebSphere on Linux. "That set thestandard for us, and everything we've added to our portfolio usesthe same type of technology," he says.

When the carrier has faced problems, Asensio indicates OneShieldhas been helpful in extending the product to do what Darwin neededit to do. He considers his IT staff's ability to take over theproduct, through the group's involvement in the project, as oneother upside to the initiative. "We count on the vendor only forany core changes," he says. "For anything else, we have people herewho are good at it and are self-sufficient. We aren't relying onvendor releases to add functionality. We have the tool set to doeverything we need to do here."

The biggest advantage Darwin has gained from thisimplementation, Asensio believes, is the IT department has beenable to provide the business side with the tools it has asked for."We've been able to have a system that supports not only ourinternal users, but we can extend producers," he says. "Everythingthat has been put in front of us we've been able to accomplish. Alot of it has been done fast and under a lot of pressure. Wehaven't run into any dead ends yet."