Company: AQS, Inc.

INSURERS PUT NEW PRODUCTS TO THE TESTIMPLEMENTATION.

Product: AQS/advantage ASP
Web Site: www.aqssys.com

Commercial policy administration provider AQS, Inc., has released AQS/advantage ASP, a hosted version of the licensed Web-centric system AQS/advantage. AQS/advantage ASP is an ISO-based solution maintained by AQS professionals and hosted at an IBM- certified data center, a secure environment that eliminates a carrier having to invest in the hardware, training, and personnel necessary to set up the system in-house.
Tuscarora Wayne Mutual Insurance has been using an earlier version of an AQS system for more than a decade, and Martin Burns, vice president and CIO, says the carrier is in negotiations with AQS to upgrade to the recent release. With a new product in the market, AQS rightly is putting a lot of its development effort into implementing the newer ISO programs in the new product, notes Burns. Thats starting to leave us be-hind. We would have to pay special customization programming costs to get some of these newer programs installed. We dont want to get too far behind the market.

Burns sees a number of pluses in the AQS/advantage product over what Tuscarora Wayne currently uses. The real selling point for us is right now our commercial lines rating and issue system is a closed box to us internally, he says. With the advantage product, the access controls built into the system allow us to leverage that product we are going to use and provide it to our agents, as well, for both quoting and status. There is a lot of integration well have to redo, but that is something we are going to have to overcome. Thats more a fact of life of migration.

There will be processing and workflow improvements over the current systems, Burns believes. There also are a lot of streamlined transactional processing [tools] our underwriters are very excited aboutfrom the way the forms are captured and kept to the way they are ordered and printed, he adds.
The ASP implementation is beneficial for smaller carriers because of the reduced implementation costs, asserts Burns. Its pay as you go instead of having a huge lump-sum licensing payment, and for small companies, thats very important, he says. Another factor is there is no hardware/software deployment that needs to be done on the carriers end. Were a small company, Burns continues. We have five IT people including myself. We have a hard time maintaining what we have. To be able to offload the hardware/software deployment part of a new system is just terrific for the IT folks. We have older systems that require batch processing, and people need to be off the system. The ASP model has an availability number that far exceeds anything we can do as a small company. System availabilitynot just to our users but to our agentsis a big issue.

Having the system hosted elsewhere with AQS maintaining all the hardware eliminates Tuscarora Waynes hardware maintenance costs for those systems. With the performance standards we expect to be built into the contracts, future scalability really becomes a nonissue for the company, Burns points out. As long as the performance standards are being met, the scalability issue falls to the vendor.

One other thing Burns likes is AQS uses XML technology, and the system is developed with Microsoft products. We commend AQS for making the choice of the market leader in that regard, he comments.

AQS/advantage ASP offers the same functionality of AQS/advantage, including all states, all lines of business, and all transactions. Users access the system via their existing networks and desktop computers, and carriers can enjoy high reliability without having to devote internal resources to keep their policy administration system up-to-date and operational. The system incorporates many standard predefined features, but the configurable architecture allows the solution to be tailored to each customers specific technical requirements and unique business needs. This standardization maximizes the speed of implementation and the speed to market. The solution also helps carriers meet deadlines for regulatory changes by reducing compliance errors and controlling costs for fines and penalties.
We developed AQS/advantage ASP for small to midsize carriers that need the efficiencies and functionality of a system such as AQS/advantage to remain competitive in this soft market but cant take on the investment in hardware and personnel to maintain the system, says Monica Rice, product manager at AQS. AQS/advantage ASP will allow these carriers to implement a robust commercial [policy administration system] that will help them streamline workflow, increase productivity and accuracy, and ultimately improve their bottom line.