The company had invested heavily in a mainframe system, GENIUS, to store the vast volumes of customer and policy information associated with growth within their product lines. As growth continued, but in an e-insurance marketplace, the company needed to upgrade its administration system to keep pace with the e-commerce world. This called for an integrated, scalable solution that would not only reduce operational costs while still finding ways to improve customer service, but also provide brokers and producers with enhanced service via the Internet. Specifically, this required the following:

• A way to extend quoting, policy data gathering, underwriting, binding and policy issuance by a fast track business unit-selling the environmental product line
  
• An enterprise wide applicant clearing process to avoid fraud and abuse
  
• An online, real-time, multiple quote creation engine for brokers/producers to work without any intervention by the underwriters
  
• Customized and flexible rating engine for underwriters to modify the policy parameters used in finalizing premiums
  
• An administrative tool for underwriters to manage insured and policy specific information
  
• Real-time interface with GENIUS for communicating policy information
  
• And all this to be accomplished without raising back office headcount

A joint American Safety Insurance and PM AM team chose a solution-Prostar-a modular solution that allowed the company's existing technology to work seamlessly with the new .Net technologies used for software development. Prostar consists of the Prostar Online website for brokers and producers, developed with Microsoft ASP web technology, and Prostar Manager, an in house administrative tool that uses Microsoft .Net technologies.

Prostar Online features:

• Brokers and producers are provided with a unified insured-centric and policy-centric view of the information required
  
• An enterprise wide clearing process, to confirm the applicant's validity based on different key parameters, and prevent fraud or abuse by promptly referring the applicant to the underwriter
  
• Real-time online multiple quote creation, and issuing a quote document in PDF format
  
• Inbuilt underwriting rules govern permissible types of coverage-the system notifies by email all violations to the underwriter
  

Prostar Manager features:

• Underwriters have the ability to review an applicant or quote, and can accept or reject it after evaluating its risk
  
• The system manages accounts, monitors and analyzes quotes/policies, and automates the renewal process for each underwriter
  
• Policy issuance is automated, involving binding the quote and submitting the information to the mainframe system
  
• The company can grant access rights to broker or producers
  

The rating engine for premium calculations was developed after analyzing work requirements. This performs the complex conditional calculations based on variable parameters controlled by underwriters, thus helping the underwriter to tweak premiums, service rates and calculation logic within an acceptable range.

Using the GENIUS mainframe interface capabilities (GGI), we developed a modular solution for transferring policy information between Prostar and the mainframe system. This solution provided underwriters with the ability to issue policies in real-time, while the added scheduling capabilities provided a batch processing option.

• Dot Net technologies used to build the Prostar Manager administrative tool.
  
• MS SQL Server 2000 and AS 400 database (DB2)
  
• Active Server Pages 3.0 and Internet Information Services 6.0 were used for building the Prostar ONLINE web application
  
• Visual Basic and COM+ used for middle tier components to keep the compatibility with new and legacy systems
  
• Genius Generic Interface (GGI) was used to develop the module for transferring policy information between Prostar and Genius
  
• PDF Lib third party tool for PDF document generation
  
  

The results were immediate. Improved customer service with real-time information shortened the time to roll out quotes and policies and dramatically cut transaction turnaround time.

By leveraging the customized solution developed by PMAM Corporation, the company can now offer its brokers, producers, and customers, with complete online access to information.

Specific benefits of the system:

• Improved overall efficiency and better risk management
  
• Sharply reduced development time compared to in house development
  
• With around 100 policies issued ever week and 5000 active policies, revenue has increased by 25%.
  
• The 4 major product groups, comprising more than 50% of the business, were completely functional within 6 months
  
• The quote take-up rate for new policies has risen by 20%
  
• The process of issuing policies has been cut down to 30 min from over 48 hours
  

The number of policies being re-issued as the result of human error has also dropped