Capitol Indemnity Corp. in Middleton, WI, had been using the AQS commercial policy administration system since the days when it ran on green screens in MS-DOS. So when the software vendor came out with AQS/advantage running on Windows, making the move to the new system was a natural.
“We converted to the AQS/advantage application as soon as it was made available,” said Troy Lethem, CIO and vice president of information systems at the carrier, which conducts about half its business through general agents and half through independent agents. The company was already having their general agents use the old version of the system for the rating, quoting and issuing policies, and knew their agents would benefit from the new Windows-based system.
“With AQS/advantage, which we call CAP OnLine, we realized we could increase the efficiency of our general agents” he explained. “Competitive advantage in our industry is all about being easy to do business with us.”
In addition to traditional commercial lines, Capitol writes a lot of coverage for special events, such as sports tournaments, cheerleading competitions, fundraising events, bike-a-thons, walk-a-thons, anniversaries and many more, which are easy to process in the AQS/advantage system. The general agents know these risks and the firm trusts them to underwrite according to its company guidelines.
“CAP OnLine allows our agents to be able to quickly rate and quote both ‘cookie cutter’ and complex risks. Our internal staff can see in real-time what is being processed and also can help agents over the phone with things they are working on and see exactly what the agents have completed. Our support staff has the ability to take possession of the quote, review it, and then send it back to the agent for completion,” explained Judy Beck, Capitol’s general agent marketing representative.
“It is a user-friendly system that enables our staff to work more closely with our agents. Our general agents used to send all information into our home office and then our internal staff would code the account into our legacy policy administration system. Now, with CAP OnLine, what the agent enters gets transferred directly into our back-end system, eliminating the additional manual input on our end,” Beck added. “Plus, this eliminates the need for us to mail the general agents their copy of the policy – everything is done through the system. With this system we have also expanded the ability for our independent agents to quote a risk in their office.”
For an agent who has a customer on the phone or in his office, that means he can provide an answer and a quote in minutes rather than days. For a storeowner who forgot about obtaining insurance and plans his grand opening the next day, or an event organizer who let the insurance detail slip, that immediate turnaround can be a lifesaver. For the agent, the ability to provide a price on the spot is often the difference between writing a policy and watching the prospect walk out the door looking for someone who can provide immediate coverage.
“General agents’ ability to bind and issue through CAP OnLine is one more reason why they love working with Capitol,” said Lethem.
CAP OnLine is built on a Microsoft Windows Server platform, using a Microsoft Internet Information Server front-end and Microsoft SQL Server database. On the back-end is a WINS policy administration system on an IBM I Series. Capitol built a Java-based real-time interface between the two systems, but plans to transition to the AQS Integrator interface when it is released.
To stay close to agents’ needs, Capitol has a rotating advisory council composed of representatives from six general agents.
“They have very smart, tech-savvy managers,” said Lethem. “We meet six times a year – five on a teleconference and then once a year we fly them in to visit face-to-face with our staff. This is our core group telling us what they like and don’t like and what we should improve next. It’s been a great working relationship that has allowed us to leap ahead in our development.”
As consumers of insurance technology and insurance services, they also see what is happening in the marketplace, and don’t hesitate to tell Capitol if it needs to catch up with a specific type of product or functionality. AQS participates in the meetings so it can get a first-hand view of what the ultimate customers – the agents – want from the system.
Capitol built its limits on standard types of policies into the AQS system so agents could see immediately if a policy was outside the company’s guidelines. Capitol has also developed an online underwriting manual so agents can determine if a risk is acceptable and write more business through Capitol more easily.
“And we keep driving for more improvements. The underwriting manual will become more database-driven and we will tie that into the AQS logic where we can,” added Lethem. “We are working with AQS to provide agents with quicker answers for all lines of business.”
Soon Capitol expects to use AQS/advantage Product Manager to do its own rate modifications through a simple user interface. AQS/advantage Product Manager will give business users the ability to manage, organize and deploy rates, rule and document changes quickly from their own desktops. Now the carrier contracts with AQS for system modification and table maintenance.
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