KMRD Partners, one of the winners of the 2011 Commercial Agency Awards forExcellence, uses a proprietary agency-management system, KMRDXChange, to help the Warrington, Pa.-based firm stand above thecompetition.

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

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

ROBERT DIETZEL: XChange is adocument-management system; every document in the system isprofiled. So, for example, we can ask the system: “show us everygeneral liability policy we reviewed for Liberty Mutual.” And itwill bring together something like a Google-search return of allthose matching documents. So for our clients or prospects, we cancompare what Liberty is offering them versus our clients—from arate perspective and from a coverage perspective.

And then we can look at our clearing house of everygeneral liability policy in our system from every carrier. We haveeight thousand forms in our database that we can compare andanalyze. And every time we do a deal, the database gets strongerand stronger.

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

Then, we took the next, scarier step, and we enabled our clientsto 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 thenwe can move forward.

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

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

DIETZEL: Does everybody use it? No. But doeseverybody like to know it's there? Absolutely. And for us it takesaccountability to another level as well. So it is impossible for usto overpromise and under-deliver. Clients love it because itprovides 24/7 access. They understand it is more efficient for themto go in and get [the document or information] themselves than tomake a phone call or have an e-mail transaction. They understandthe insanity of passing files back and forth via e-mail andwondering 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 aquote from one of our first clients. She looked at the system andsaid, “You're going to organize my entire insurance world.”

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

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