Ease Of Implementation Smoothes The Transition For West Coast Insurers To ISO's Property Valuation Solutions

Boston,MA - West Coast-based insurers Capital Insurance Group (CIG), Civil Service Employees Insurance Group (CSE), and Merced Mutual Insurance have implemented ISO's property valuation solution—ISO HomeValue—to better estimate the cost to re-build a property in the event of a total loss. As a web-based residential replacement cost estimator, ISO HomeValue was easily incorporated into each insurers underwriting workflow.

"We were impressed by the speed with which we were up and running with ISO HomeValue," said Frank Querques, senior vice president of insurance operations at CSE. "Within a matter of three weeks our agents were accessing ISO HomeValue directly from our agency portal. ISO HomeValue even lets us manage the addition of new agents. Even better, building cost data is updated automatically, over the web. This is a significant improvement over the laborious process required by our previous provider, which meant mailing out CDs to every agent for every update."

To meet the varied business and information technology needs of insurers, ISO's solutions for property valuation provide a complete range of implementation options—from simple web links to fully customized web services integrations. In many cases, an insurer that wants a more integrated solution will start with a simple option to derive immediate value.

"We needed to get up and running quickly, so we decided to have our agents log in to ISO HomeValue using a simple web connection," said Penni Lockard, underwriting and systems manager at Merced Mutual. "Now, we are in the process of completing a more complex web services integration. This will enable our agents to access ISO HomeValue's replacement cost estimates without even leaving our system, further streamlining their underwriting workflow and reducing the potential for data entry errors."

ISO designed its implementation options with the insurance agent in mind. Insurers have the option to set up a process whereby property information already captured in the company's quoting system will automatically populate ISO HomeValue's data fields. Similarly, data from ISO HomeValue can be fed back into the company's system. This significantly reduces duplicate data entry, enabling agents to work faster with fewer errors.

Since most new clients change to ISO HomeValue from a previous provider, ISO places a great deal of emphasis on ease of transition.

"We wanted the transition to ISO HomeValue to be painless for our agents and underwriters," said Vinnie Ascoli, personal lines manager at CIG. "ISO HomeValue's knowledgeable technical support staff worked with us to customize ISO HomeValue to fit our needs. The responsiveness of the ISO HomeValue team has made the experience extremely positive for us."

SOURCE: Capital Insurance Group