Agent of Change
Continued
Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting is also easy to
customize. The company could, for instance, set limits and processes that differ from state to state. This was important because different states have different regulations, and the software needed to be customizable based on those rules.
Still, Penn National’s IT team was prudent when starting the implementation. The team took a state-by-state approach. The software first went live in Maryland—one of the smaller states in which the company operates—where it wouldn’t have a major impact on the organization. In addition to implementing Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting, the company built a new Web portal and underwriting scorecard and integrated its data, business intelligence, and predictive analytics into an up-front automated underwriting system, says Jenkins. The fact that the Oracle insurance solution is so interoperable is especially important because now that all these IT components can work together, Penn National can write more policies—policies that may have gone unwritten in the past, he adds.
“If someone had a DUI five or six years ago, we wouldn’t have considered writing that individual. Today, because of other factors and variables, we will consider writing that individual. So it gets down to the philosophy of the right price for the right risk,” Jenkins explains. “The predictive analytics and Oracle’s Insbridge rating engine are helping us increase the amount of business we’re writing—business we’d preclude in the past. Now we’re able to accept it and are putting a price on it.”
Profits Assured
Another key to the success of the implementation was Penn National’s customer focus. From the very beginning, the company put together agency councils where customers would come in and evaluate the new tools and interfaces, providing both positive and negative feedback.
Some of these changes included adding more data and prepopulating specific Web form fields. For example, when agents were typing vehicle identification numbers they wanted to know how many numbers they had typed so they wouldn’t omit any of the 17 required digits. They also needed a Web interface that wouldn’t lose all their data input if they forgot a digit or two. “What we did was have face-to-face meetings where we exhibited and demonstrated the product. Then customers would suggest changes to the system, and where feasible, we would make those changes, turning them around in short order,” Jenkins says.
The proof of Penn National’s strategies and new software came from a significant boost in sales and savings on operations, says Jenkins. The system increased business for Penn National by about 40 percent overall. The company has estimated a savings of more than US$3 million in labor and other processing costs with the new system, since it has opened the door for straight-through processing. The system allows for the processing of initial data capture at policy issuance without human intervention. “We got more benefits out of the system than we anticipated. And we continue to get more benefits,” Jenkins notes.
Penn National was smart to make so many changes at once, because in the insurance world, systems and customer-facing interfaces are more than simply tied together. If one component isn’t working correctly, the rest suffer considerably, says Celent’s Weber. “The policy admin system drives your ability to effectively produce documents. You need a documents engine on the back end, but you’re getting data from somewhere. So those projects are very tightly coupled,” he explains. “The same with an agent portal. You can have great Web pages, but you need to serve up data from somewhere, and it’s probably from your policy admin systems or your commission systems or your new business system.”
Going forward, Penn National has the ability to keep improving on its business processes due to the flexibility of its software selection, something that Weber says is important when making a technology choice. “One of the things that unifies some of the Oracle products is that they balance modern technology and user-driven rules and tools,” he says. “Out of the box they do what carriers need them to do. I think that’s an important design consideration. You want to have enough functionality so that when you open the box, it does something impressive, but you also want to have sufficient flexibility in the back end so that you could implement very unique functionality using the tools.”
Jenkins agrees, saying that Penn National will benefit from the new infrastructure whenever it wants to add a new state or a new line of business. “We have a number of those ‘what if’ type of scenarios, and because of that, it’s critical that IT be more agile and not be an inhibitor to the business. Before, when I was asked how long it would take to win a new state or add a new line of business, I’d have to tell them that it would take a year. With these new systems, we anticipate that the process would take a minimum of 50 percent less,” he says. “This allows the company to grow. IT won’t stifle growth.”
For More Information
Oracle Insurance
Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting
Networking for Success
Karen J. Bannan is a freelance writer based in New York state.
