The One and Only

The goal of Harleysville Insurance is one shared by many in the competitive world of property/casualty insurance: to be easier for independent agents to do business with. "Generally, agencies deal with multiple carriers, and their customer service representatives opt for a company that has a good product, good pricing, and good technology," says Akhil Tripathi, senior vice president and CIO of Harleysville.

According to Tripathi, it became evident to Harleysville a couple of years ago the carrier needed to replace multiple policy administration systems it had been using for its commercial lines business to make things operate in real time. The carrier wanted a solution that was Web based, he adds, and would facilitate access through the Internet for its agents.

Harleysville offers multiple lines of insurance, and predominantly the carrier operates in the commercial lines space for small and medium-size businesses. The carrier replaced five mainframe-based systems with the single AQS/advantage solution. The older systems were put in place over the last 20-plus years as Harleysville acquired other regional companies. Those systems were modified to some extent but still were more line-of-business based.

Harleysville began its search for a simple Web-based policy administration system. It went through an evaluation process Tripathi reports focused on ease of doing business, the ability to modify the system without difficulty for new products and services, and the ability to do real-time rate, quote, and issuance. "We looked at a half-dozen systems with a team representing product managers, actuaries, and technology people," says Tripathi. "We landed with AQS at the end of the whole process."

One reason Harleysville liked AQS, notes Tripathi, was because the culture of the AQS team was similar to that of Harleysville in terms of insurance knowledge, work ethic, and the ability to work with the AQS senior management, including its CEO. "We felt not only did AQS have a good product and good technology but good P&C industry knowledge, as well," he says. "We wanted to make sure we had good visibility and support."

Although implementation is not complete, Harleysville began using the system in Pennsylvania, one of the largest of the 32 states in which the carrier operates. "We've had positive feedback so far from our agents and internal staff," says Tripathi. "The first state is always the toughest. Now, we plan to roll out multiple states simultaneously. We have two more states coming up in the next couple of months, and then we'll go to five states and then seven. Based on our current plan, the implementation will continue throughout 2008."

Harleysville has developed proprietary capabilities, such as predictive modeling and specific underwriting rules, so the ability to modify the AQS solution was important. Since the system is designed for rating, quoting, and policy management, Harleysville wanted to integrate its capabilities with those available from AQS. The insurer also deployed an underwriting rules engine that allows the business to select referrals. "Those kinds of changes and some of the workflow adjustments we wanted have enabled us to better optimize our operation," says Tripathi. "Those were the kinds of things we needed done as well as integration with our back-end systems."

Tripathi has found none of the initial challenges to be insurmountable. "We have an aggressive plan, and we are moving faster than most of our peers," he says. "We drove hard in terms of meeting our time lines, commitments, and resources. Working together as partners was a key." Harleysville was able to add resources to the team when it was required. "We shared the burden and common objectives to get to the goal line," he says.

Typically for a carrier the size of Harleysville, most companies would go through a two- to three-year implementation, so to go live in a 12- to14-month period was aggressive for Tripathi. "This is a single system that processes all lines of business, and that's a pretty exciting change," he says. "It's consistent to do rate/quote for all lines of business for our agents and our internal users."

The new systems should help Harleysville in both its technology investment and with operational improvements, Tripathi believes. "I manage business operations also, so we expect to gain some efficiency and for our agents to do more self-service," he says. "We expect to have more chances to look at more business in the commercial market than we were able to do in the past."