The Sooner, the Better

Remember that old adage about early birds? Not surprisingly, it rings true even in the insurance business. For example, getting complete information about a potential customer at the beginning of the quoting process — rather than at the point of sale — allows insurance carriers and their independent agents to make intelligent decisions about prospective policyholders from the start. Moreover, agents won't waste time chasing potential customers who don't fit underwriting guidelines.

Insurers adopting a prefill program for policy data are finding great value, according to John E. Cantwell, assistant vice president – marketing at ISO. Cantwell conducted a web seminar, "How to Make Application Prefill Work for You," presented by ISO, Tech Decisions, National Underwriter P&C, and Florida Underwriter.

"Without prefill, most third-party data comes late in the policy process," says Cantwell. "With prefill, we're verifying information at the beginning of the process. It's better for the customer, there are fewer surprises, and that leads to more sales."

ISO Prefill offers value to insurers through four areas, explains Cantwell: better customer experience, more sales, lower expenses, and reduced premium leakage and fraud.

Customers can receive faster quotes, Cantwell maintains, whether through an agency, the carrier's call centers, or the insurer's website. By having relevant information on the applicant available from the outset, insurers will experience more first-call closings with fewer callbacks needed and fewer customers abandoning the quoting process on the web. "Faster quotes equal more productive agents," he says. "More accurate quotes and policies equal less follow-up and correction."

Numerous data sets are available for carriers to use in ISO Prefill, Cantwell indicates. Coverage Verifier is one of these. "[Coverage Verifier] gives a snapshot of the customer's policy data at the point of quote in prefill, not at the point of sale," he says.

Coverage Verifier is a participatory database of coverage and policy information similar to loss history databases, notes Cantwell. Member insurers contribute detailed policy transactions daily, with up to seven years of transactional history kept on file, he adds.

Another data set is the A-PLUS claims history database, which contains information from carriers that control more than 92 percent of the industry's direct written premium. "The data is customized so [carriers] receive only the claims they want," says Cantwell.

He points out that additional available prefill elements include the annual mileage of a vehicle. "This is calculated using available odometer readings in combination with modeled analytics," he says. The analytics can also determine the daily commute for drivers, and by accessing data from the professional license database, a user can find whether the vehicle is utilized for business.

The advantage users have with ISO prefill technology, suggests Cantwell, is the depth of ISO's data. "No one processes more insurance data than ISO," he asserts.

More than 600 million property/casualty insurance claims are part of the ISO database, with approximately 14 billion records in the statistical databases.

ISO's focus at the moment is on personal lines, states Cantwell, but he doesn't rule out eventually offering prefill for commercial lines. "There's no product on the shelf yet for commercial lines, but it could be done," he says. "We're closer to this than we might expect."

Cantwell assesses the value of prefill for independent agents, as well: "Agents should embrace this technology because it makes their lives so much easier," he says.

Access to the full web seminar is available here.