Grain Dealers Mutual Chooses Insurity's Policy Decisions
Hartford, CT - Grain Dealers Mutual Insurance Company has upgraded its policy administration capabilities with Policy Decisions from Insurity, a ChoicePoint® company. Policy Decisions incorporates complete policy-lifecycle administration services – from application intake to rating and underwriting, from policy issuance to renewal and reinsurance – on a single Web services platform according to company.
According to David Patterson, assistant vice president and director of Information Services for the Indianapolis-based property-casualty insurer, said the accessibility afforded by Policy Decisions' use of Microsoft's .NET architecture was a plus. "The promise of .NET is access and self-service," Patterson said. "The world runs on the Internet. We have to offer our applications in a Web services environment that lets agents and policyholders handle many of their own transactions without help."
Grain Dealers looked at various competing systems that promised improved access, Patterson said, but Insurity had several advantages that clinched the deal. He added that "Besides extending transactional access to independent agents and policyholders, there were other aspects of Policy Decisions that sold us," Patterson said. "We will be able to leverage Policy Decisions' flexible integration with our existing systems to go in and analyze our own data. It is a giant leap forward in our ability to manage our business better."
"The Windows .NET platform is removing integration roadblocks," said Bill Hartnett, general manager of Microsoft's Insurance Solutions Group. "It is enabling insurers to connect information, people, systems and devices through software. Through Insurity, Grain Dealers is using this technology to help its agents act decisively at the point of sale, improve the experience of its customers and gain a competitive advantage. Policy Decisions demonstrates .NET's ability to integrate systems and make information accessible to the people who need it."
It is believed to be Patterson is also pleased with the user-friendliness of Policy Decisions: "For a system as sophisticated as this one, it is surprisingly easy to learn and navigate across the entire policy processing lifecycle: new business, renewals, endorsements, cancellations and reinstatements." According to Grain Dealers Mutual Insurance Company the new system will be implemented in one state by early October. At first, agents will access it to do their own quoting for various commercial policies. The longer-term plan is to provide self-service access to agents for specific policy maintenance functions.
"It is gratifying that Grain Dealers recognized some of the key advantages of Policy Decisions," said David Pedersen, Insurity senior vice president. "By extending point-of-sale capabilities to their agents, they can improve their responsiveness while reducing time and cost. On top of that, they will get substantial benefits by taking advantage of the data integration and analysis capabilities of Policy Decisions. Being able to incorporate risk data into the underwriting process – then to analyze results data for management reporting and productivity benchmarking – provides the opportunity for significant business-process improvement. Grain Dealers has a vision for where they want to be. Insurity just provided the tools to realize that vision." Patterson said he has been pleased with the attention and service Grain Dealers has received from Insurity.
SOURCE: Grain Dealers Mutual Insurance Company