In July of 2006, The Woodlands Financial Group (TWFG)encountered a liquidation order from the Texas Department ofInsurance that would put one of TWFG's business partners (TexasSelect) into receivership.

"What that meant to us was our 11,000 policies at Texas Selectwere going to need to be rewritten," says Gordy Bunch, presidentand CEO of TWFG. When a state puts a company into receivership andliquidation, they seize all the assets of the carrier andassociated contracts, he explained.

Bunch contends the complication for his company was to find asoftware package that was compatible with the Texas Select book ofbusiness.

ISCS had worked with Texas Select in the past on other issuesand Bunch learned the vendor probably was the only software companyavailable that could implement and rehabilitate a system that wouldbe compatible with the book of business and the 11,000 clientswithin the mandated 60-day period.

The biggest issue for TWFG was getting the new policiesprocessed in the timeline required. "We had less than 60 days toprogram and move the entire book, so we had zero options outside ofISCS," says Bunch. "We always seem to have options [in mostbusiness cases], but in this particular case we had none."

Bunch had been referred to ISCS by another company that earlierhad found themselves in a similar position, albeit with a differentcompany. With the vendor selection process so limited, TWFG wentabout the difficult job of getting the installation completed asquickly as possible.

"The next steps for our book were to populate the database, getthe programming updated to the current filings and rates, gothrough some testing, and issue 11,000 policies on the sameeffective date," notes Bunch.

TWFG then had to get the policies printed, mailed, and out thedoor along with billing to the mortgagees and with agent copies."It was a substantial amount of work in a short period of time,"says Bunch."

TWFG had no choice but to meet the deadline, which was imposedby state regulators, if the company wanted to retain itshomeowners' clients.

"In order for us to retain [the customers] we had to have themplaced in a policy," adds Bunch. "The timeline was real and weworked feverishly to get that done."

All the physical work fell to the TWFG staff. "When you havethat many transactions in that short a period of time you prettymuch pull up your bootstraps and put your best people on it," Bunchsays.

Bunch dismissed the idea of bringing in temporary help. "We didnot have time to slow down and show anybody how to do something, sowe started with a higher skill-set group and just made it happen,"he says.

Some of the difficulties faced by TWFG involved the quality ofthe data from the old policies. "The mortgage company might havechanged since the last data dump we had or addresses may havechanged," says Bunch. "We were dealing with 11,000 individualtransactions that had to go out by the same date, which compoundedthings. We had a year's worth of work to get done in 60 days. Wejust made it happen."

There were some reporting issues that weren't thought out upfront, according to Bunch, but given the timing of everything, hedoesn't believe either TWFG or ISCS feels badly about theprocess.

"We did what we had to do to get it done, and any issues orchallenges we had couldn't be thought out ahead of time," saysBunch. "We just dealt with them as they arose."

Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of the rollover process,not even family issues, explains Bunch. "My wife was eight monthspregnant in the middle of all this," he recalls.

"Fortunately my son was born on Aug. 29 and our drop-dead datewas Aug. 24, so he gave me five more days," Bunch continues. "Itold him I was going to pay for his college since he didn'tinterrupt this rollover process. I'm fortunate and amazed that wemade it through all that."

For TWFG, all's well that ends well. "We still have a majorityof that book of business in force, so we were fortunate [ISCS] wasable to help us with that in a short period of time," says Bunch."That's provided us a lot of value to be able to retain that bookover the last couple of years."