Technology Sector Specialist AH&T Insurance Practices What It Preaches With Top-Notch IT System

AH&T Insurance noted that it is "deeply rooted in the technology industry" as one of the charter members of the Northern Virginia Technology Council–which David Schaefer, the agency's executive vice president, characterized as "one of the largest of its kind, with 1,100 members, running the gamut from government contractors doing a lot of top-secret work, to weapons makers, to software producers, to telecommunications firms."

AH&T has also capitalized on its membership in the Washington Technology Industry Association. "One of our first great successes in Seattle was when we secured a program that catapulted our operation out there," said Mr. Schaefer. "We were able to secure the prospect through our participation in the WTIA, based on our experience with the Northern Virginia Technology Council."

To anticipate emerging exposures and needs in the tech business, AH&T also was a founding member of TechAssure, which the agency describes as "a global organization of elite independent technology risk and insurance advisors."

TechAssure is "an interesting animal," according to Mr. Schaefer. "It's an association of agent and broker collaborators, rather than competitors, with members focused on risk transfer and risk management for tech companies–first from just around the country, and now global." The group meets twice a year, with regular collaboration online "about how best to serve the insurance and risk management needs of the tech community," he added.

AH&T is a big agency, producing $196 million in premiums during 2008–$104 million from group and individual life and health insurance sales, and $92 million from property-casualty, with the bulk in commercial lines. "But our product isn't the insurance policy. It's all the risk management services we provide that surrounds the policy," explained Mr. Schaefer.

AH&T serves a number of other markets, such as nonprofits–a lucrative niche with some 2,600 nonprofits headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area. But the agency indicated that it derives about half its business from the tech industry.

That means the agency has to guarantee top-of-the-line tech support to its sales and service staff, as well as produce customized tech tool options to keep pace with its technologically sophisticated clientele.

"With such a vested interest in the industry, AH&T has made great strides in the last five years to remain a leader by leveraging innovative technology solutions in ways to improve productivity and customer service while developing and offering our clients value-added tools," the agency said in its award essay.

The agency said its "research, installation and implementation of the technology in place today began with an examination of areas within our agency infrastructure where poor performance impacted productivity." AH&T identified these "weak areas" as:

o Building power.

o Network infrastructure.

o Dependable access to external agency resources via the Internet.

o E-mail performance.

o Communication between the Leesburg, Va., and Seattle, Wash. offices. (The agency opened its first and only branch in Seattle in 1999, which now produces 27 percent of AH&T's revenue.)

Power for the headquarters building was a longtime headache because of the agency's location (in a historic district) and older utility infrastructure.

"In October 2005, we installed a diesel Katolight whole-building generator…[which] can support the agency's power requirements at full demand for 30 or more hours before refueling is required," AH&T noted. "The most obvious benefit this has delivered is the ability for the agency to continue operations during brief or long-term power outages."

The firm added that to address the deficiencies in network performance, "AH&T replaced all networking infrastructure and performed a complete redesign," rewiring three-quarters of the building over an 18-month period.

Why not just move to a more modern facility? "We've basically been in the same historic area since 1921," explained Mr. Schaefer in an interview with NU. "Part of our decision was based on our culture. That area is an intrinsic part of our identity, so moving the epicenter of our agency is not something we would do lightly. We bent over backward to stay put."

Once the rewiring was completed, a Cisco 6509 Catalyst chassis was installed that "allows the agency to plug in additional switch modules as the agency grows, while still allowing all switches to communicate and be centrally managed," AH&T noted in its essay, adding that a second chassis will be installed in the future for redundancy.

"These design changes have eliminated many hours of troubleshooting [Voice-over Internet Protocol] voice-quality issues" within the agency's local and wide-area networks, while "also greatly reducing network congestion, failures and overall performance issues," AH&T said.

The agency installed a time-division multiplexing-based point-to-point circuit between the Virginia and Seattle offices, providing wide area network connectivity for the VoIP phone system, terminal server access, server and desktop management.

"The circuit also provides either office with automatic Internet failover to the other location should either office lose Internet access," the agency said. "If the WAN circuit were to fail, a [virtual private network] over the public Internet is automatically enabled."

Meanwhile, AH&T is "working to engineer a complete failover solution for the phone systems for both offices. Right now, we have a partial process in place by making use of the WAN to automatically reroute outbound calls should the carriers for either office go down."

AH&T said that "by using the WAN and the phone system, there are no long-distance charges incurred for office-to-office calls," while the circuit "also allows the agency to leverage 'least-cost routing'"–a capability that lets calls that originate from either coast be routed out either of the office systems, "to avoid incurring long-distance charges for certain external calls."

To bolster e-mail performance, AH&T said it outsources its anti-spam solution that offers a 99 percent accuracy rate in intercepting unwanted messages from among the 800,000-to-one million received monthly, "of which 11 percent are legitimate and delivered to our mail server."

"Reengineering our anti-spam solution has resulted in a substantial decrease in the unnecessary use of bandwidth by eliminating the delivery of more than 750,000-plus spam messages a month," according to AH&T.

In addition, the agency implemented a full disaster recovery and business continuity plan to protect its e-mail service, "without the overhead or expense of redundant mail servers or complexity of a clustered solution."

AH&T explained that "if the e-mail server should ever fail, the e-mail continuity service is automatically invoked. All messages are retained and held. All new mail is accessible via a browser interface so that the agency can continue to communicate with our customers. When the primary e-mail server returns to an operational state, all retained e-mail is delivered to the server."

AH&T also deployed a high-definition videoconference system, used to improve communication between their offices.

"Our principals have face-to-face meetings using 47-to-50-inch video screens," the firm noted in its essay. "The meetings are conducted over the Internet and/or WAN by simply dialing the other office much like you would dial a phone. Within a few seconds after the 'call' is placed, they are able to see their partners in the other office."

AH&T said it has also used this technology to allow both offices to virtually attend an insurance educational conference, which "saved us several thousands of dollars in travel and lodging costs."

"With solutions to our weak infrastructure issues completed," according to AH&T, the agency "leveraged several software systems to improve account management"–the combination of which allowed it to maintain its "paperless" methodology for client file management.

The agency said that once its infrastructure and systems were brought up to speed and became operational, "we began developing and implementing several initiatives to provide value-added services to our clients and carriers."

AH&T "leveraged technology to provide clients with easy access to their account information, forms and other pertinent information 24/7," while also developing a Web-based service to assist clients with certificate management and doing business with carriers in real-time. The agency said it launched its first secure Web-based client application back in 1996.

"To improve transactions with carriers, AH&T account managers conduct real-time transactions without leaving the agency management system," which can be managed from a single interface for employee ID and password management, the agency noted.

"This capability has greatly reduced the need to visit individual carrier Web sites," AH&T pointed out in its essay. "In addition, AH&T maintains a secure Internet Web site–RiskNet–for marketing efforts to provide submissions to carriers. These sites streamline the transmission of information and often large documents to carriers."

The agency reported that one-third of its transactions are now conducted in real-time. "That number is probably understated, but we wanted to be conservative," said Tim Duke, the agency's first chief information officer, who came aboard in 2005 and now oversees three additional full-time tech support staff.

"A lot of it has to do with the carriers," Mr. Duke added. "Our real-time traffic is tempered by company participation, and over time more are getting on board. We certainly would like to see more real-time processing as we move forward."

AH&T is probably most proud of its Web-based certificate management service–a home-grown tool called "MyRiskTracker."

"This service automates the certificate management process and enables clients to go beyond enforcing mere compliance with lease and/or contract requirements to manage their risk on an ongoing basis," noted the agency's essay.

"It allows clients with what I call an extreme need for compliance to manage their certificates of insurance via a dynamic database and other custom features, along with the human element that an insurance broker can bring in terms of knowing what's needed to get the job done," explained Mr. Schaefer, who said it was created at the request and with the financial support of a large client who was not satisfied with off-the-shelf products on the market.

"We developed a custom-built alternative in-house, figuring it would have a wider application later, which turned out to be true, helping us land other insurance accounts," said Mr. Schaefer.

AH&T also prides itself on providing its customers with "an easy and immediate way to securely access their account," noting that "client access is available 24/7 through the agency's Web site," at www.ahtins.com.

"This access allows our customers to reprint an insurance certificate or auto ID card, access their billing information or a policy summary, or send an e-mail to their account manager," the agency noted.

On the group life and health insurance side, AH&T provides its benefit customers with "a custom, secure, branded Internet Web site that is maintained by the agency and contains easy access to plan information, human resources forms, enrollment and tax forms, educational documents, helpful Web links, and other information. Our customers can share this with their employees, or use it solely for the HR department to manage benefit information."

The agency has no intention of resting on its laurels, as if you snooze, you lose in the fast-paced tech world.

To keep its technology cutting-edge and in touch with real-world needs, AH&T convenes a committee, including its president, Executive V.P. Schaefer, CIO Duke and his technology staff, agency principals and private consultants to identify, plan and implement its tech systems, the agency noted.