OneShield, a provider of policy and billing core systems forproperty and casualty insurers, announces the availability ofDragon Billing, a comprehensive billing, payables andreceivables management solution for both direct and agencybill.

Developed with client and insurer feedback, it enables insurersto deliver process efficiencies, speed to value. and customerservice with the extensible toolset of OneShield Dragon.

Dragon Billing handles the full billing lifecycle from billinginstruction to close, and manages direct and agency billing acrossall lines of business. Automation of commissions, exceptionhandling, promise and delinquency processing, carry forwards,write-offs. and refunds are just a sample of Dragon Billing'sfunctionality.

With Dragon Billing, insurers can provide customers flexiblebilling options, payment plans, and features like tasks to helpresolve customer issues quickly and easily.

“By offering Dragon Billing, OneShield expands its productoffering to better meet the growing needs of the insuranceindustry,” says Karen Furtado, partner at Strategy Meets Action.“This commitment to product investment and expansion demonstratesOneShield's commitment to deliver high-value solutions to theinsurance industry. Dragon Billing provides exceptional billingcustomer service capabilities that will allow insurers to have adistinct competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

Dragon Billing delivers:

Process efficiencies—Dragon Billing automatesmultiple processes, such as the delinquency process and exceptionhandling, and additional process improvements can be made withDragon Billing's workflow and business rules capabilities. DragonBilling's user interface allows for making changes any time toimprove payment processing, disbursements, shortfall management,and commissions. Insurers are able to leverage equity-based datingto reduce uncollected earned premium.

Speed to value—The open architecture of theDragon toolset enables carriers to respond to the changing needs ofthe market and the growing demands of their customers to help themwin in the markets they want to serve. Dragon Billing'sconfiguration tools reduce the need for an insurers' IT staff tomake changes, such as adding new billing or payment plans. Suchmodifications can be made by a business analyst.

Enhanced customer and agent services—Insurerscan invoice customers the way they want to be billed and makechanges to payment plans and methods in real time at any point inthe billing cycle. Several payment plan options can be supported,which boosts customer retention efforts. Additionally, agents gainaccess to real-time information all in one place. Dragon Billing'sportals for customers, agencies, brokers, and reinsurance companiesreduce friction between all participants in the billing andcollections processes.

“We made it our goal to build Dragon Billing to be a system thatwould help insurers put the customer first,” says Steve Forte,director of product management and alliances for OneShield. “To dothat effectively, we worked closely with a network of insurers togain insight and valuable input that helped us design DragonBilling to meet their needs today and in the future. By giving themthe flexibility to allow their customers to choose their billingand payment plan options, they can provide better support, gainoperational efficiencies and decrease processing costs related toinvoicing, payments and receivables management.”

Dragon Billing is built on OneShield's Dragon platform and isdesigned to be implemented as astandalone solution or with DragonPolicy. Dragon's billing and policy share a common data model,database, architecture, and toolset along with partner management.There is no integration required between the two solutions,reducing implementation costs, risks, and time to production.

“We are proud to deliver a fully-integrated policy and billingsolution that works together seamlessly to better service the needsof the market,” says Glenn Anschutz, CEO and president forOneShield. “By adding a comprehensive billing platform as the nextlogical extension of our extensible Dragon Policy solution, we areallowing our customers to lower their cost of ownership byleveraging one tool to configure both applications.”