Applied Systems: Insurance carriers answer call for real-time, round-trip rating

Report says agents appreciate allies in ‘war on keystrokes’

University Park, Illinois � February 17, 2011 – Innovative insurance companies are reaping the benefits of providing something agents want: A streamlined policy rating process that gathers multiple real-time quotes from a single standard data entry.

A white paper published this week describes real-time, round-trip rating as the “new paradigm” for policy rating. Quoting carriers and agents, the paper highlights the advantages of the new process and summarizes the limitations that all agents and brokers faced before some carriers began re-thinking the process from their agents� perspective.

The paper cites EMC Insurance Companies of Des Moines, Iowa, with a success rate above 90 percent for its new rating process that provides a quote in five to ten seconds.

“Developing our real-time, round-trip rating system was a complex task,” EMC Business Technology Analyst Teresa Addy says in the white paper. “But when agents see the difference between our system and their bridging systems, they want to start using real-time round trip as soon as they can.”

“Real-Time Rating: The most powerful change carriers are making to help agents market, quote and write new business,” was published this week by insurance technology company Applied Systems, Inc. In conjunction with developing insurance agency management software, Applied Systems is an innovator in developing and promoting state-of-the art agency-carrier communication technologies based on insurance industry standards set forth by ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) and CSIO (Centre for Studies in Insurance Operations).

The white paper is available at http://www.appliedsystems.com/PDF/Round-Triprating.pdf.

About Applied Systems Inc.

Applied Systems Inc., develops, sells and supports insurance agency and broker management systems and provides services for accounting, customer, policy, claims management, and all related agent and broker functions. More than 130,000 users in 11,000 agencies of every size and complexity level use Applied Systems solutions built around insurance agency software � TAM® , Epic® , Vision® and DORIS® . In addition, the company leads the industry in agency-carrier real-time and batch communication solutions. www.appliedsystems.com