InSystems, a developer of document and compliance automation for the insurance and financial services industries, has released InSystems Tracker 6.3, the latest version of its compliance software. Tracker streamlines the creation of new insurance products and securing approval from state regulators to improve speed to market. It automates both the product development and state compliance filing processes, enables insurance organizations to bring new products to market faster, lowers operating costs, and reduces market conduct exposure and possible fines, indicates Neil Betteridge, vice president of marketing for InSystems.
The new version of Tracker also allows insurers to pay filing fees for fully electronic filing, and the regulatory specialist module offers content updates that are distributed to carriers through automatic electronic updates as often as needed.
Among the insurance carriers already using Tracker is Allstate Insurance, which has had the product in production since March 2005, according to Bonnie Whitman, associate state filing director for Allstate. She adds Allstate is looking forward to working with the new release early this year. Currently, Allstate uses Tracker to make each of the carrier's filings with insurance departments throughout the country. Allstate is licensed in all states in the U.S.
"One big benefit [for Allstate] is the reporting capability–just being able to report on production, who's got what and where," says Whitman. "That's been very helpful." Prior to including Tracker in its software portfolio, Allstate was using the System for Electronic Rate and Form Filing (SERFF), developed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).
Tracker integrates directly with SERFF, and InSystems claims the combination of the two systems is dramatically faster and makes carriers more productive. In side-by-side testing, Tracker slashed the time for multistate filings by 60 percent to 70 percent vs. using SERFF alone, according to Betteridge.
Wittman reports Allstate used SERFF alone in the past but believes the addition of Tracker has improved the process. "We did use SERFF prior to getting Tracker, but your data wasn't housed with SERFF," she says. "You still had to maintain your documents somewhere. With Tracker, everything is completely linked. You are able to view all the documents and anything that has been sent to the states. We don't have to maintain a separate filing system for our documents. That's been a huge benefit for us."
"Based on feedback from dozens of carriers using Tracker with SERFF, we've optimized the user experience to make it even faster and easier," says Betteridge.
Wittman reports SERFF accomplishes many of the tasks Tracker completes but notes Tracker is more of a front-end application in that all the activity included with the filing is sitting in Tracker. "With SERFF, all you are doing is sending the filing, and all the upfront work is done with paper," she explains. "When you are ready to file [with SERFF], you are scanning the paper and sending it through SERFF, where Tracker allows you to be completely paperless. We weren't able to be paperless with SERFF [alone]."
Keeping up with changing rules, procedures, and forms required by 50-plus states and jurisdictions when filing policies is time consuming and error prone, asserts Betteridge. To meet these challenges, he says, the Tracker system:
Eliminates inefficient, manual product development and filing processes and achieves faster time to market.
Lowers operating costs associated with paper, printing, filing, mailing, and storage.
Reduces the aggravation of preparing for market conduct audits and lessens exposure to and the risk of possible fines.
Leveraging Tracker's project-team collaboration and workflow capabilities helps insurers manage the cross-functional process of product development, Betteridge continues. The product also lets interested parties see the status of all product initiatives at a glance.
"This saves a lot of man-hours and eliminates a lot of processes we used to have," affirms Wittman.
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.