ACORD Product Intros Focus On Improving Agency Transactions Orlando
Participants in this years ACORD Annual Conference were treated to a spate of new product and product enhancement announcements, some of which focused on agency-carrier transactions.
Among the announcements of particular interests to agents were:
AMS Services Inc. announced the expansion of TransactNOW, its interface product that enables AMS customers to process business transactions with carriers in real time without having to leave their agency management systems.
According to Windsor, Conn.-based AMS, eight new carriers have joined TransactNOWHanover Insurance, Citizens Insurance, EMC Insurance Companies, Allied Insurance, Continental Western Group, Acadia Insurance, Union Standard Insurance Group and Berkley Mid-Atlantic Group.
TransactNOW has also added policy view inquiry transactions, allowing agents to respond to all customer inquiries from within their management systems "in a matter of seconds," said AMS.
"We are excited to be able to add these new carriers and policy view inquiry so quickly," said Dave Shea, president and CEO of AMS Services Agency Markets. TransactNOW first became available on March 17 of this year, including billing and claims inquiry for eight carriers. "We will continue to add new transactions, more carriers and streamlined security workflow as quickly as possible," he added.
More details are available at www.ams-services.com.
Applied Systems Inc. said its Agency Manager Vision Series will be the foundation for the companys new N2N industry-wide business strategy that "leverages open architecture and Web services."
"Now Vision will empower agencies of all sizes to seamlessly connect and transact business with their customers, carriers and third-party partners, all from within their agency management systems," said University Park, Ill.-based Applied.
According to Applied, N2N encompasses both products and services that use the ACORD XML standard to enable real-time data exchange between Vision management system users and carriers back-end systems, public domain Web applications, and third-party software programs, such as rating or credit reporting applications.
"Our ultimate objective with N2N is to deliver a comprehensive set of tools and services to completely connect the insurance industry, from customer to carrier," stated Wayne Pardue, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Applied.
Now a prospect can fill out an online application from an agencys Web site, he continued. "The N2N architecture allows the data to be simultaneously imported into the agencys management system," he said. "The insurance industry will now realize the true efficiency that can be achieved by streaming data over the Internet."
Further information is available at www.appliedsystems.com.
The Hartford Financial Services Group introduced a suite of transactions for independent agents who use Brea, Calif.-based XDimensional Technologies Nexsure agency management system for both personal lines and small- and mid-size commercial transactions.
For commercial insurance, The Hartford said it will offer agents real-time quote and issue capabilities for workers compensation. It can also accept auto, workers compensation and property schedules for mid-sized businesses.
The Hartford, based in Hartford, Conn., said it is also certified for personal lines download with Nexsure, and will soon be offering personal lines real-time rating to Hartford agents using Nexsure.
According to the insurer, the commercial lines real-time quote and issue for workers comp takes advantage of ACORD XML standards to send data to The Hartford in real time. "Agents are provided an accurate quote within a matter of seconds and can then request issue of the policy at the touch of a button."
IVANS Inc. announced an expansion of its Transformation Station technology, allowing DORIS and InStar agents to conduct real-time service transactions with carriers for billing, policy, claims and loss runs using the ACORD XML view transactions.
Transformation Station is an Internet data exchange for real-time transactions between agency and carrier systems.
According to Old Greenwich, Conn.-based IVANS, DORIS has implemented the technology with 1,300 agencies to reach eight different insurers. InStar has a customer base of 1,000 agencies, reaching 7,000 desktops.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, June 9, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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