Like many insurance carriers, SECURA Insurance found itself dealing with the integration headaches of multiple policy administration systems. Putting a single system in place may reflect a growing trend among insurers of various stripes, but selecting that single solution can be a difficult process. The search for a new commercial lines policy administration system was driven by the business side of SECURA, as it looked for a way to streamline the underwriting processes and turn around new business and renewals more quickly. When SECURA began investigating solution providers, though, it came across 22 vendors claiming to have a solution that would fit the Wisconsin-based commercial lines carrier.
Almost immediately, one company stood out among the crowd, according to Ernie Pearson, director of systems development at SECURA. Although the carrier sought additional information from seven policy administration vendors after the initial request, Pearson says SECURA's selection team was almost unanimous in its belief it had found the right solution.
Nearly eight months later, though, that view changed dramatically. "We sent a request for information asking [the vendors] to rank their capabilities, and then we used their responses to drill down to a short list," explains Pearson. "We brought each of those seven in for a demo and for an introduction to their company, and we also asked them to respond to a more comprehensive request for proposal. We used that to whittle down to one company. We had a unanimous decision that we thought was the way to go until our proof of concept subsequently proved that not to be the case."
Reversing field never is easy, but SECURA never looked back. Pearson reports the carrier's executive team applauded the decision to renew the search, knowing there was more to lose over the space of a three-year implementation period if the product couldn't do what the carrier needed it to do.
"The proof of concept was important in our process," says Pearson. "That involved our commercial lines underwriting users actually getting an opportunity to have hands-on experience with the system to learn a little bit more about the functionality–the usability of the system–in a setting other than a demo. We also looked closely at the integration capabilities. What type of outputs did the system provide? What was the structure of the organization? We looked at things such as data quality and data organization and how we might integrate with the system, as well."
After all the work was done, SECURA selected AQS and its Advantage Suite. The AQS/advantage suite includes AQS/advantage, the policy administration system; AQS/advantage Integrator, an integration solution; and AQS/advantage Product Manager, a self-maintenance tool.
The seven-month wait to reopen the search actually proved to be advantageous for the carrier, Pearson believes. In that short period of time, he says, he could see the products maturing. "From the initial rejection to our final acceptance, we were impressed with how each of the products had grown," Pearson notes. He asserts one reason for the growth was the practical experience vendors were gaining as more carriers turned to new solutions.
Finding the right solution can be a difficult chore, as SECURA learned–matching the technology is a serious issue. A great deal of SECURA's existing systems runs on a mainframe platform. They are written in COBOL and use CICS and DB2. The new AQS platform is written in .NET, has a SQL server database, and uses XML to exchange data with other systems. "Bridging those two platforms presents SECURA with a bit of a challenge in terms of us getting up to speed on the new technologies and understanding the most effective way to bridge those platforms and to integrate that data," states Pearson.
SECURA went through a detailed evaluation process before choosing the AQS/advantage suite and signing the contracts in the fall of last year, but Pearson affirms it was worth the wait. "From a technology standpoint, one of our primary concerns was the integration capabilities of the system," he says. "We need to pass information from our policy administration system to multiple back-end systems, and we wanted a solution that made our integration efforts seamless and somewhat effortless. AQS/advantage Integrator fits into our technology strategy because it utilizes standards and Web services to transfer data from AQS/advantage to other systems. Ultimately, we expect this to increase our productivity across several departments."
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