By Richard W. Brewer, President & CEO, Arbella Mutual Insurance Company

APT A BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS

"...the APT system created a win-win situation for
our agents and our policyholders..."

At Arbella, the quality and reliability of our user interface is one of our highest objectives. The ease with which our agents can upload and download information is of paramount importance to us. In short, we consider our agency interface a cornerstone of our overall agency support program.

In 1993, we formed our Agency Interface Department. We were well aware of agents' reports of being frustrated by the time, effort, and complications involved in processing business with each carrier's proprietary software. From the start, we believed that the best interface would be one that implemented single entry multi-company interface (SEMCI) standards. With that in mind, we immediately began a three-step process: We listened to our agents, designed a system that would meet their needs, and implemented that system with Alliance for Productive Technology, Inc. (APT), as the catalyst.

First, we surveyed our entire agency base, consisting of more than 500 agents, to determine what steps we might be able to take to help them do business faster and more efficiently. In the surveys, agents told us that in their everyday business, they had to interface with other carriers using separate interface processes. Clearly, this was not only time consuming, but work was repetitive and redundant. Furthermore, our agents explained that they wanted to communicate electronically with their companies, and they also wanted to use their own agency management system--not one developed by a specific company. Our survey made it clear to us that our initial inclination towards SEMCI was on target.

Our second step required that we research and develop a system that would meet our agents' needs. We found that the APT system created a win-win situation for our agents and our policyholders--as well as for Arbella.

Our download product, already in use at that time, allows agents' systems to be in synchronization with the company's system, which in turn allows the agents to better service their insureds.

The third and final step was to go forward with implementation in 1995; we were the first company to implement Massachusetts automobile upload using the APT solution.

Prior to our use of the APT product, turnaround time for the issuance of a new policy was commonly six to ten days. With the APT product, we are now able to turn around new business in just two days. We made our customers happy with quick and accurate service; we made our agents happy with more streamlined workflow and fewer duplicated efforts--we were able to give everyone what (s)he asked for.

APT software provides automated solutions for many functions that once required human intervention. Some manual tasks that were previously the responsibility of underwriters or policy screeners now have been assumed by the APT automated function. The APT software gives us the capability to decide what we would allow our agents to write and load these protocols via edits directly onto an APT-supported agency management system. In a matter of minutes, agents enter their insured's new business information into their own agency management system; that data is then processed through our edits, and the agents know immediately if the information they entered meets our company protocols.

Our agents have commented that with the upload program, there is a definite ease of doing business with us. They now assume more control of the ultimate responsibility for the quality and accuracy of their data. With the APT software, agents upload policy information into our databases, without the data's changing hands. The result is that agents retain ownership of the information. Our data accuracy rate is substantially higher with upload, as agents deal directly with policyholders, so errors are reduced--a major advantage.

The evidence continues to mount that interface supports a number of our corporate objectives. Because of our intelligent use of this automation, we now are ready to capture the efficiencies that we long have been expecting. There is further evidence, supported by comments from both agents and vendors, that we are among the market leaders with our interface strategies.

We receive approximately 1,500 new Massachusetts personal automobile policies each month through our APT upload. Currently, we have a success rate of between 94% and 96%, indicating that the policies uploaded from our agents successfully process onto our mainframe system. A total of 81 agent locations are now using our upload product; we plan to have 150 agents on-line with upload by the end of 1997.

Our agency interface goal has always been, and continues to be, to develop a superior agency interface system with a focus on improved service, quality, retention and expense reduction. APT has become an integral component of our achieving this goal, and of our continued success with upload and providing automation solutions to our independent agents. *