The Right Connection

As Meadowbrook Insurance Group found over the years, the challenge of establishing smooth interaction with business partners can be daunting. Meadowbrook believed the best way to improve its relationship with MGAs and other partners was to integrate its own systems with those used by its business partners. "We wanted their systems and our system to talk to each other," says Becky Adriaenssens-Colucci, senior vice president of field operations.

Meadowbrook gave a lot of thought to how to iron out these processes, and the company also expressed a real interest in reducing its expense ratio to become more competitive. The Meadowbrook business model involves tailored programs and unusual business, which makes it difficult to push MGAs onto one kind of policy system, according to Adriaenssens-Colucci. "We need to be able to use multiple systems with different partners doing their own thing," she says.

The carrier looked at several products for the answer. One particular approach was very expensive in the way the model was going to be deployed, notes Adriaenssens-Colucci. "It gave everyone sticker shock," she says. The company also looked internally to consider custom coding the connections but realized that was a poor choice for a long-term solution. "We would have so many of these types of integration that managing them going forward would be a nightmare," she adds.

Meadowbrook then came across Adeptia as a company that had a tool for the purpose of integrating systems but also had the ability to automate the process flow surrounding that integration point.

As a strategic effort, Meadowbrook has decided to automate all the connective points between the company and its partners. Adriaenssens-Colucci explains such integration will remove a lot of Meadowbrook's hard expenses, including employees doing coding work, checking, or reconciling forms. "We think this will make it easier to do business for our partners because right now a lot of the expense of managing this data in two different locations falls on them," she says.

Everyone from Meadowbrook is happy with the way the integration has been managed, affirms Adriaenssens-Colucci. When the business partners bring records into the system, if there are any kind of errors, issues, or automatic notifications, Meadowbrook easily can correct the records. "The customers are happy because they are no longer waiting for the business to be logged into the system," says Adriaenssens-Colucci. "We collect our premiums quicker because we understand what the premium is and what we need to be paid."

Another advantage for Meadowbrook has to do with the fact it is a publicly traded company, which means adherence to the SOX 404 requirements. "Every one of these integration points, once they've been automated, becomes something that no longer needs a manual checks-and-balances system around it," says Adriaenssens-Colucci. Prior to implementation, SOX 404 costs were difficult to manage because all the processes were manual, which required deeper scrutiny by auditors, she explains.

The only downside for Meadowbrook, Adriaenssens-Colucci claims, arose from a lengthy dependence on the Adeptia personnel to get the first integration complete. "Now, we're using the product strategically throughout the organization, learning how to use the tool ourselves, and putting it into place in our own organization without being so dependent on Adeptia to do the work for us," she says.

The number-one reason this project was special for Meadowbrook, Adriaenssens-Colucci believes, is there currently is a tool in place that has the automated workflow around it to handle the technology leaks that had hurt the organization in the past. This is highlighted by a strategic thought process that allows the entire organization to follow the same processes, she reports. "We expect it to be about a three- or four-year project to automate all the processes, linking all the systems together and automating the reconciliation between systems. That's how important it is for us."