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When you think about the insurance industry, one of the last words to pop into your mind is “agile.” Whats more likely is some combination of antiquated, slow, difficult and stodgy.
Computerized policy management, from quoting to paying claims, has been part of the insurance industry for the past four decades, but the various legacy systems in place dont connect seamlessly to one another. The variety of proprietary systems used by carriers has meant that agents and brokers have to find ways to communicate with the carriers and to consolidate information for their clients.
Insurance agents had to rely on third parties such as IVANS, or on proprietary computer connections, to exchange information with carriers. This could be slow, cumbersome and expensive—or impossible without resorting to duplicate data entry. Over 40 years, insurance carriers have built up so much on their back end that theyre restricting access to new products due to the weight of their legacy applications.
“One of the top issues at most property and casualty insurers is legacy-system preservation and migration,” said Kimberly Harris, vice president and research director at Gartner. “Because of the cost embedded in these systems, there is a need to leverage their investment.
“At the same time, there are business requirements—from partner and supply-chain transactions to regulatory compliance—that must be managed within these companies. Web services and a service-oriented architecture [SOA]-based infrastructure enable a people- and process-centric approach, collaborative processes and legacy preservation.”
Enter Webify Solutions Inc., built on IBMs on-demand architecture. Manoj Saxena, Webifys CEO, describes the companys offerings as enterprise software that delivers SOAPs (Simple Object Access Protocols) that help insurance companies leverage and extend the life of legacy applications, while simultaneously pushing out new functionality.
On-demand applications are a new category of service-oriented business applications that dynamically integrate people, processes and information across enterprise and application boundaries.
Based on SOA, on-demand applications let companies publish business processes and transactions as business Web services, which customers and business partners can discover and provision “on demand” into their own business processes with a few clicks of a mouse. Companies can build on each others services in this manner, creating new, loosely coupled applications that drive transaction flow and business visibility across the extended enterprise.
One of the issues in the insurance industry is business agility, or the ability to launch new products faster than the competition. Carriers and agents have been saddled with infrastructure over the past 40 years that slows them down.
Webify has leveraged IBM on-demand architecture to allow insurance agents to connect to carriers systems via a browser, as well as directly machine-to-machine. The goal is to increase depth and breadth of information exchange between a carrier, and agents who sell that carriers products and service customers.
Next Page: Making vertical silos work together.
Vertical Silos
Webify builds front-office applications for insurance carriers. The value to carriers is making it easier for agents to do business with them. “Rather than hop from system to system or make a lot of phone calls, the agent can more easily get the information directly from the carriers themselves via their preferred method of access,” Saxena said.
Agents can access the carriers information either through a portal or by direct connection to the carriers system. The carrier can become a preferred business partner for the agents by making it easier for the agents to do business with them.
Large carriers have different lines of business and have built vertical silos for each line. A customer who has marine, life, auto and homeowners insurance with one carrier ends up with four different bills. Through the Webify system, an agent can make the vertical silos work together and appear to be one application. Webify unifies the access to all of these insurance carrier systems, which simplifies the processes for the carriers significantly.
Before the advent of SOA, agents had to build point-to-point bridges with each carrier. Through the Webify application, an agent can come into the carriers Web site and decide how they want to access the carriers information and services.
Webify Insurance On Demand Applications is a family of service-oriented business applications focused on increasing market share, building agency loyalty and reducing administrative costs. The Webify suite of applications provide agents with on-demand access to carrier rating, quote, policy and claims management processes.
These processes are published as multimodal Web services that support both browser-based and direct, machine-to-machine connections to the agents Applied and AMS systems. This is intended to improve agent sales effectiveness and to create a preference for doing business with the carrier using the Webify suite.
Webify Insurance On Demand Applications conform to ACORD and WS-I standards. In addition, the solution is an implementation of IBMs On Demand SOA Reference Architecture and leverages IBM middleware and Webifys SOBA Framework.
Recently, one large insurance carrier took on the task of modernizing its entire system. Faced with diverse business systems and continuously changing product offerings and regulations, Firemans Fund Insurance Company (FFIC), a property and casualty insurance company providing personal, commercial, marine, excess and surplus lines and agribusiness insurance products nationwide, was looking for a solution to provide the right information to the agents at the right time through both portal and direct machine connections.
Next Page: ROI expectations of more market share and reduced call-center volume.
ROI Expectations
FFICs business objectives included reducing duplicate entry and problems associated with a proprietary interface. The companys system requirements were to connect directly to the agency management system, to its internal billing and policy systems, as well as to support an Internet-based interface for agencies that do not have agency management systems.
Another goal was to further FFICs new Enterprise Partner Integration platform with an enterprise service-oriented architecture by using industry standards and business-grade Web services for all internal and external integration points.
FFIC selected Webifys service-oriented business applications on IBM middleware to fulfill this business need for on-demand connectivity and agility.
Firemans Fund expects the business ROI (return on investment) to include increased market share—through agent preference and loyalty by being easy to do business with—and reduction in call-center volume, through both direct machine-to-machine connections and Web-based self-service.
Additional advantages are expected to be quicker time to market with new insurance products and processes through an on-demand process and transaction provisioning model; improved business visibility and control through BI (business intelligence) reports; and overall cost reduction through incremental modernization of heritage IT assets delivered as business Web services.
As part of its Enterprise Partner Integration EPI initiative, FFIC plans to incrementally roll out new processes and transactions as multimodal Web services that support both browser and direct connections.
When the system becomes fully live in December, the company will be able to process billing information for all of its 59 operating offices in 26 states, and will begin installing additional applications from Webifys Insurance On Demand Applications. FFIC and Webify also plan to broaden the scope of agency management systems and are in discussions with AMS/TransactNOW.
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