While electronic bill presentment and electronic payment is not news for individual and simple commercial lines, the challenge (and real value) of Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) lies in the complexity of group list bills and complex commercial lines, where collaboration and timeliness are key to cost containment and customer satisfaction.

After the initial insurance industry stampede to create a presence on the Internet, insurance companies began to take a step back, regroup and reevaluate the real potential of this new medium. While the early hopes, promises and hype of selling insurance on the Internet have fallen short of expectations, companies have begun to go back to good old-fashioned ROI analysis to determine the productivity gains and cost savings that could be derived through the Internet. The search for the right insurance processes to leverage the functionality of the Internet has resulted in the understanding of common characteristics of processes best suited for implementation on the Web. Those that make good Web-based applications are those insurance processes requiring massive paper exchange and that are highly dependent upon timeliness of communication and collaboration among the process stakeholders.

One such process is bill presentment and payment via the Web. In fact, research indicates over the next few years, more than 95 percent of all insurance companies will have some form of EBPP (i.e. Web-billing). Ideal candidates for Web-billing are those insurers requiring complex billing functions for the commercial and group markets, where premium bills require manipulation or reconciliation by the customer, and recalculation by the billing system. The upshot of the enhanced Web-billing functionality: dramatic reductions in premium billing, delinquency, and remittance processing costs.

Group and complex commercial billing should be seen as a Web-billing opportunity, not an obstacle. While individual and simple commercial lines of business have rapidly been moving to electronic bill presentment and automatic debit/electronic payment for years, the presentment and payment of a static bill is a fairly straightforward transaction. Unfortunately, the same approach has not worked for group list bills or most commercial property and casualty bills due to the complexity of the bills and their non-statistic characteristics. These types of bills are typically presented to the customer with an expectation of changes required and a dialogue established between carrier and customer to correct the bill as needed. In other words, timely collaboration between the stakeholders is critical to the effectiveness of bill presentment and payment for these complex bills a natural fit for Internet implementation.

Rather than hurdles too difficult to overcome, the challenges of group and complex commercial line billing create great opportunities to streamline processes and achieve significant cost reductions and, most importantly, provide better customer service. The fact is, staying ahead of the times and maintaining a competitive edge in the insurance world means taking advantage of opportunities and stepping beyond the commonplace.

Web-billing simply provides your customers with the best means possible to correct, accurately recalculate and pay their bills; elevating customer service to new highs and administrative costs to new lows.

For more information, visit WorldGroup on the Web at www.wgcusa.com

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