As Meadowbrook Insurance Group found over the years, the challenge of establishing smooth interaction with business partners can be daunting. Meadowbrook believed the best way to improve its relationship with MGAs and other partners was to integrate its own systems with those used by its business partners. "We wanted their systems and our system to talk to each other," says Becky Adriaenssens-Colucci, senior vice president of field operations.

Meadowbrook gave a lot of thought to how to iron out these processes, and the company also expressed a real interest in reducing its expense ratio to become more competitive. The Meadowbrook business model involves tailored programs and unusual business, which makes it difficult to push MGAs onto one kind of policy system, according to Adriaenssens-Colucci. "We need to be able to use multiple systems with different partners doing their own thing," she says.

The carrier looked at several products for the answer. One particular approach was very expensive in the way the model was going to be deployed, notes Adriaenssens-Colucci. "It gave everyone sticker shock," she says. The company also looked internally to consider custom coding the connections but realized that was a poor choice for a long-term solution. "We would have so many of these types of integration that managing them going forward would be a nightmare," she adds.