KMRD Partners, one of the winners of the 2011 Commercial Agency Awards for Excellence, uses a proprietary agency-management system, KMRD XChange, to help the Warrington, Pa.-based firm stand above the competition.

At a recent roundtable in New York, where all three winners of the Awards for Excellence shared insights about their success, we asked Robert Dietzel, co-founder of KMRD partners (which had $20 million in premium volume in 2010 and has 20 employees, 11 of whom are commercial-line producers) some questions about the value of XChange to his agency and its clients.

National Underwriter/PropertyCasualty360.com: Robert, tell us about KMRD XChange, your own, in-house system, and how having it helps differentiate you from your competition.

ROBERT DIETZEL: XChange is a document-management system; every document in the system is profiled. So, for example, we can ask the system: “show us every general liability policy we reviewed for Liberty Mutual.” And it will bring together something like a Google-search return of all those matching documents. So for our clients or prospects, we can compare what Liberty is offering them versus our clients—from a rate perspective and from a coverage perspective.

And then we can look at our clearing house of every general liability policy in our system from every carrier. We have eight thousand forms in our database that we can compare and analyze. And every time we do a deal, the database gets stronger and stronger.

Another value with XChange is that you can set security at the folder or even file level and have anyone from the outside access it via the internet. We use encrypted technology just like what a bank has. Our view is our files are our clients' files and vice versa. If they want to access a contract review, they can sign on in real time and see any changes. If they want to access the rating-basis schedule or audit schedule or profit schedule, they can. All those things that define their risk are there in a language they understand, and it's accessible via the internet in Excel or Word.

Then, we took the next, scarier step, and we enabled our clients to actually have rights access to these documents. So, for example, clients will go in and will change their property schedule for us, save it as a new version—and we're alerted of the change and then we can move forward.

Transparency is almost to a scary level with the Xchange, but it organizes the insurance and risk management files for our clients. And they can use it as their risk management portal as well. They can share passwords in the field and access it that way, so it has been a differentiator for us.

We also let underwriters access certain portions of the file, so they can underwrite off of it. If we outsource some safety or loss control—that vendor has access so we can work together on the client.
National Underwriter/PC360.com: What is the feedback that you have gotten from clients?

DIETZEL: Does everybody use it? No. But does everybody like to know it's there? Absolutely. And for us it takes accountability to another level as well. So it is impossible for us to overpromise and under-deliver. Clients love it because it provides 24/7 access. They understand it is more efficient for them to go in and get [the document or information] themselves than to make a phone call or have an e-mail transaction. They understand the insanity of passing files back and forth via e-mail and wondering which one is the latest version. It helps ensure we're collaborating on the same documents.

And, in summary of the feedback we have received, I will use a quote from one of our first clients. She looked at the system and said, “You're going to organize my entire insurance world.”

National Underwriter/PC360.com: How, if at all, does a traditional agency-management system fit into the picture at KMRD?

DIETZEL: We don't use a traditional agency-management system except maybe to invoice and bill.

Special Reports /

Award-Winning Agency's Own Management System Helps It Stand Above Competition

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