Q: A recent survey conducted by Vertafore found that 77 percent of insurance agencies directly attribute their fiscal growth during 2012–2013 to the use of technology. How do you respond to that news personally, as a professional who works to find solutions in that space?

Over the last several years, insurance distribution economics have changed immensely. A stagnant economy with lower sales and payrolls for agents' customers and market overcapacity has made it extremely difficult for agents to grow their business. Many agents are embracing technology to expand their visibility and do more with less.

Owners and managers of insurance agencies recognize the value of applying technology to both the sales and operational aspects of their business. Social media, mobile devices and tablets have all enabled agents to provide better service to their existing customers and access new customers and markets. It is fascinating to ponder how they will utilize these technologies and others in the future.

Your company provides scalable policy-administration software solutions for P&C carriers. What do some of your products do to allow insurance carriers and producers to serve clients more effectively?

Unlike consumer-goods companies that do test marketing of products prior to undertaking a full-scale introduction, insurance companies are hindered from taking such an approach due to the significant technology costs and time it takes to bring a product from concept to reality. Our PolicyWriter software takes the risk, time and cost out of product introductions—making it viable to test-market insurance products quickly while at the same time providing the scalable solution necessary to handle massive sales volumes with the same software.

During a recent PolicyWriter Challenge proof-of-concept, we were asked to make several changes live, in front of the business users. The customer asked us to update their automobile product for youthful drivers and they wanted to see us authorize a new state for business; add, delete and change several coverages; integrate with a new VIN validation service; add a Teenage Driver discount; configure underwriting rules and user messages for the Teenage Driver discount; and unit test all the changes.

These changes took us one day to complete. They were amazed by what we had accomplished and said that, had they done this in their current system, the changes would have taken 200 days.

Broadly speaking, what do you feel are some of the most significant innovations in agency software in the past decade? What were the game-changing moments in this space, in your opinion?

Widespread use of ACORD XML for P&C as the standard for real-time data communications between agency management/comparative quoting platforms and the carrier quoting websites has to be one of the most important innovations to come to the market over the last several years. Combined with the implementation of web-based eForms (ACORD or home-grown) as the data-gathering and presentation solution of choice both in agency management and comparative quoting software, a great deal of processing capacity has been gained by agents.

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Executive of the Month: John B. Pettit

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