New Policy Administration Products Add Functions, Flexibility For Insurance Duties

Policy administration continues to be one of the hottest areas of technology product development for insurance, and vendors continue to come up with new offerings or new twists on existing ones.

Several of the latest policy administration products and upgrades announced during the past year are profiled below.

• Camil ion Solutions announced its next-generation policy administration system, developed specifically for the property-casualty market.

Leveraging a services-oriented architecture, “Authority Suite,” gives insurers “the agility they need to overcome the challenges created by hard-coded legacy systems, including the ability to quickly revise and develop new products, automate underwriting, and provide online sales—all while reducing their exorbitant systems maintenance costs,” said Toronto, Canada-based Camilion.

According to the vendor, Authority Suite supports the entire product life-cycle, including application data capture, qualification, rating, quote management, bind and issuance, and all required policy endorsement functions.

The product also automates the underwriting process through a consolidated underwriting workstation, and provides straight-through processing for online sales.

All product data and rules are externalized in a central repository where products can be rapidly configured, according to Camilion.

The product also “simplifies integration to other enterprise systems by providing open accessibility through a Web services interface.”

Pricing starts at $500,000, a company representative noted.

• Computer Sciences Corp . offers “Exceed”—a comprehensive insurance software system for large property and casualty carriers worldwide.

According to Austin, Texas-based CSC, Exceed is a full-featured policy solution that provides an integrated approach to complete policy processing.

Intelligent screens reduce entry time on all transactions, speeding up the entire policy processing process.

Additional attributes of this component include flexible data capture, quick quote, automated rating and underwriting, and real-time information ordering, the vendor noted.

CSC also introduced “Exceed ClaimsOffice,” which includes modules for bodily injury evaluator, best practice negotiations, fault evaluator, fraud evaluator, and a litigation solution suite.

Pricing information was not provided, but implementation costs can range from “$250,000 to several million,” based on a variety of factors, said CSC.

• Decision Research Corp . announced the introduction of “DecisionMaker Extended Lines,” an enhancement to the company’s DecisionMaker policy administration suite.

According to Honolulu-based DRC, the enhancement product extends the capability of a product that already supports integrated and/or standalone modules such as quoting, rating, complete policy issuance, claims and billing.

Insurance companies can have a new system in production “in just a few months,” the company said.