An Enterprise Solution Consolidates Policy, Claims, & Billing

By Randy Wheeler

Today, insurance companies must manage more information than ever before. Unfortunately, many are still utilizing separate point solutions for policy administration, underwriting, claims management, and billing. Some insurers even utilize different systems to service their various lines of business. These redundant and disparate systems create a disjointed infrastructure and separate silos of information that result in inefficiency, manual workarounds, and an inability to adapt in a highly competitive insurance environment.

• Insurance Intelligence. Developed with in-depth expertise and in collaboration with market-leading insurance companies, an enterprise solution has built-in "insurance intelligence." In the past, expertise and data resided in the minds of insurance professionals or paper-based files--unable to be leveraged across the enterprise. Today, an enterprise solution embodies both industry knowledge and proven best practices with powerful "out of the box" capabilities.
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• Powerful Development & Customization. Insurance business needs and regulatory requirements constantly change, and insurers must respond quickly, offering new products, adjusting rates, and implementing new processes as needed. Traditionally, it took up to 18 months to make system changes to legacy applications. A flexible enterprise solution endows insurers with market agility. Business users can quickly make system and process changes on their own. With this level of development capabilities, IT departments have maximum control to configure and customize the system to meet their specific company needs.
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• Powerful Data Management, Analysis, and Reporting. Since information is the key to improve operations and profitability, an enterprise solution must create a centralized data repository to consolidate and manage information. Using a browser-based platform, carriers can deliver increased transparency and the benefits of online information, real-time transactions, and 24/7 connectivity that customers have come to expect.
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• From a management perspective, powerful data reporting enables insurers to leverage real-time intelligence to holistically manage their books of business. The system analyzes policy, claims, and risk information. In addition, end users can customize and modify reports with easy-to-use configuration. Carriers leverage these analytical capabilities to achieve aggressive market growth.
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• A Rules Engine to Drive Workflow. Most policy and underwriting processes are performed with labor-intensive operations, manual data entry, and spreadsheet-based calculations that are prone to error. To replace this inefficient process, a rules engine will automate workflow, improve underwriting decision-making, and enhance the rate of straight-through processing. Insurers utilize business rules to incorporate unique practices and automate mundane tasks, which reduces overhead and focuses more attention on customer service.
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• Enhanced Integration & Connectivity. Insurance companies have complex IT environments, and they increasingly must connect to and exchange information with external partners, applications, and data sources. An enterprise solution optimizes data and system integration. Various types of "connector" technologies are provided, such as real-time data exchange using message-oriented middleware (MOM) and ACORD standards, such as XML and Web services. With sophisticated integration capabilities, insurance IT departments can deliver more capabilities--faster and cheaper than ever before, as well as modernize various components to reduce maintenance and operational costs.