New Delphi Information Systems president Robin Raina is banking heavily on ebix.com., an Internet commerce product which is designed to be a revenue generator for agencies.
"You can't cross the Grand Canyon by taking small steps."
--Wendy Goldstein
ushing the envelope" is how some people live their lives--constantly exceeding the limits of what is normally done, being innovative. For instance, taking a foreign-manufactured computer hardware product and introducing it to a highly regulated economy that serves a population of over 800 million people who reside in 23 states, and who speak some 49 different languages and 544 dialects. Robin Raina did just that when he introduced Dell Computers in India in 1991. Having grown up in India, Raina was familiar with the economy, the people and the language issues. Eighteen months after Raina took on the responsibilities of brand positioning and creating the marketing/operations plan, Dell Computer had become the number one brand in India.
Robin Raina doesn't shy away from big jobs. His credentials include other marketing and management masterstrokes, including stabilizing the infrastructure of Mindware, a software conglomerate with operations in seven countries. That accomplished, he moved to Singapore to establish a new subsidiary for the conglomerate. Within 18 months, Raina had 125 software professionals in place and the subsidiary was doing well financially.
Raina then moved back into the electronic contract manufacturing industry to work for a sister company to Mindware--a move that brought him to Charlotte, North Carolina. While he was there, Delphi Information Systems contacted him to provide a reference for a colleague. In a classic "one thing led to another" situation, both Raina and his colleague joined Delphi Information Systems. It was November 1997.
Delphi hired Robin Raina as vice president of professional services. One of his goals was to expand the vendor's consulting group. But while preparing to do so, he realized his understanding of the insurance industry was almost exclusively from the perspective of a consumer. This realization germinated into a business goal. "I wanted to take Delphi toward the consumer side and help Delphi better understand what the consumer wants. In turn, we could better develop the right system for agencies and carriers," he explains.
Raina's responsibilities and titles changed quickly as he fortified Delphi's sagging infrastructure. He inaugurated his "reconstruction" project by reforming support operations. "I wanted customers to feel the effect of a rejuvenated organization," he notes. Although support staff was cut sizably, Delphi now offers around-the-clock support.
Within two months of joining Delphi, Raina was named senior vice president and was handling U.S. sales, international operations (for Delphi's subsidiaries located in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, London and Singapore), marketing, communications, support, consulting and training. By February 1998, he had been named chief operations officer. And by August 1999, he had been named president. With his taking over the presidency of Delphi Information Systems, Raina will be able to continue to strengthen the vendor's position in the marketplace with Internet-enabled products, a one-of-its kind insurance e-commerce portal and a newly announced strategic partnership.
"There will be a major thrust on the Internet side," he says. "I've always believed in the power of the Internet and its economies of scale."
At the forefront of Delphi's Internet acceleration effort is ebix.com. "ebix is a dream that I've lived for a year-and-a-half," Raina explains. "Our first step was the ebix.link product (introduced in January 1999)--our business-to-business tool that streamlines data flow between agents and carriers on large commercial accounts. My vision of ebix was more than just ebix.link, though. I wanted to take Delphi into a more diversified role--making Delphi an Internet player--executing its Internet vision. By leveraging the strengths of Delphi as an agency management system vendor, we can become a company that offers agencies value in terms of insurance content and becoming a prospect generation engine for them--becoming a revenue source for agencies. And also offering consumers a way to get competitive quotes in a quick, productive manner."
ebix is an acronym for "electronic brokers & insurers express." Raina defines ebix.com as "an e-commerce portal for insurance--a one-stop site for consumers and insurance professionals." In addition to ebix.link, mentioned above, a second e-commerce "window" at the ebix.com portal was launched in September 1999: ebix.mall. ebix.mall is an "Internet insurance exchange," according to Raina, where consumers can solicit bids for personal lines coverages--homeowners (including condo and renters insurance), auto, health and life. (Commercial lines will be added in December.) Consumers visit ebix.mall, define their policy coverages and the timeframe for receiving quotes (ranging from one to three days). Rather than merely engaging a rating engine, Raina says ebix.mall leverages the spirit of competition on which independent agents thrive. Here's how ...
Consumers complete a simple form consisting of check-boxes and drop-down lists. Relevant information is then mapped to an ACORD form that an agent can access by clicking a button. But as agents know, there's more to evaluating a risk than the information contained on an ACORD form. This "qualitative" data is available to agents as well by clicking another button. Whereas the ACORD form compiles the "need to know" data, the qualitative data falls into the equally important "nice to know" category. For instance: how long the consumer was with his/her previous insurer, why the consumer is "shopping" this policy, what the consumer expects from an independent agent, whether evening or weekend hours are important, and any special concerns.
Whereas consumers pay nothing to use ebix.mall, producers pay a $100 annual registration fee. The registration process includes collection of credit card information for the agency and its producers, the states in which the agency is licensed to do business, and any niches or areas of specialization that the agency may have.
Once the agent reviews the ACORD form and the qualitative data, he/she has the option of providing a quote. The quote can be for the coverages and/or limits the consumer specified or the agent may deviate from those specifications based on details contained in the qualitative data. By looking at the range of quotes already provided by other agents, the agent may conclude that he/she can't be competitive on this risk. This helps agents be more productive, Raina believes. "Too often agencies spend too much of their marketing time on an account, only to find out later they weren't competitive. So with this process, they can see the range of quotes--what's the lowest, what's the highest--and determine if they can be competitive."
Raina points out that this process acknowledges that insurance is a qualitative cycle. "It isn't like buying a car. The lowest price may not mean the best coverage for the consumer. With ebix.mall, Delphi has built the entire qualitative cycle of insurance into this buying process while keeping the process easy for the consumer."
But, he continues, "the big deal here is that this is not a rating engine concept. It's actual intelligence being used by the agency on the other side. What's more, the consumer can transact the entire process online. The consumer can accept the policy without picking up the phone."
If the agent chooses to provide a quote, the agency account is charged 50 cents for that activity. Delphi is keeping the quote cost nominal to encourage activity at ebix.mall. "And besides, marketing costs today are already high," Raina observes. In addition to providing a quote, the agency can include attachments that are forwarded to the consumer--reinforcing the idea that the buyer's decision should be based on more information than simply price. The attachments could include a Word file, an Excel file or a PowerPoint file containing electronic agency brochures, information about the carrier being quoted, or special features of the particular policy being offered.
Once the consumer chooses to do business with a particular agency, that agency is then charged $10 for closing the business. After the consumer enters his/her social security number to indicate the decision to accept the quote from a particular agent, it is then the responsibility of that agent to "pick up the phone" before binding the policy.
The next step for the agent is to submit the application to the carrier and with ebix.link available to the agency and the carrier, the transaction can take place electronically. All the necessary data from ebix.mall will be converted to an AL3 format for transmission to the carrier. Delphi charges the agency $20 per submission to send a transaction and the carrier $20 to open the electronic folder.
Earlier we referred to the simple form which consumers complete when they first visit ebix.mall to request a quote. Most of the data collected is mapped to the appropriate ACORD form. But there is additional information that can be channeled directly to other underwriting tools, eliminating the need for the agent to key in additional data. Through an arrangement with ChoicePoint, Delphi is offering online MVRs, CLUE reports, and credit reports via ebix.com. Dun & Bradstreet information is also available. These are especially attractive features for smaller organizations that don't buy reports in volume.
Raina points out that Delphi received input from the Certified Professional Insurance Agents Society (CPIA) in the design and development of ebix.mall. In return, Delphi has provided automatic registration to the site to the CPIA's 3,500 members--assuring that consumers will have access to products being offered by some of the country's top agencies. (See Rough Notes September 1999 issue, "CPIA Society dedicated to sales excellence," for a related article.) The CPIA Society has given its endorsement to the ebix family of products and will be providing assistance with the "Ask the expert" feature available at ebix.com.
To establish more inroads with carriers in the financial services area, Delphi recently announced a strategic partnership with Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). Delphi will leverage HP's "e-services" capabilities and the relationships with the financial services/general insurance sector that have grown out of those capabilities. HP also will provide technology support to ebix.com in terms of high-end hardware and e-security software support. "HP's e-services division and insurance services division have a strong clientele in the insurance carrier market. HP will put its might behind ebix.com to help us reach out to consumers and insurance professionals alike," Raina declares.
Whereas there's a $100 per year registration fee charged to agents who want access to ebix.mall, there's no charge for access to ebix.com. However, Raina is quick to note, "Even if you do no commerce at our site--no ebix.mall, no ebix.link--there's still huge value there."
Delphi describes ebix.com, which was launched in May 1999, as "the only site on the Web to meet the insurance needs of both the consumer and the insurance professional." Below are some site feature highlights:
Content for insurance professionals
*Insurance Research Center for focused search on any data on insurance
*Discussion groups
*Insurance events, including online registration information
*News watch, offering links to industry trade publications
*Industry associations, providing links to the association Web sites
*Career opportunities--carriers and agencies are being encouraged to post their available positions on this page. Delphi also has made arrangements to have links to a number of recruiting companies' Web sites.
Content for consumers
*FAQ
*Ask an expert
*Insurance Yellow Pages, a custom search engine for risks outside the scope of coverages handled on ebix.mall
*Insurance glossary, "Insurance Words and Their Meanings" published by The Rough Notes Company
*Consumer Access, basic information on a variety of insurance topics provided by The Rough Notes Company
*Map and directions, supplied by MapQuest
*S&P carrier rating, Agents and consumers can learn about carriers' financial stability from Standard & Poor's. Companies will be defined in "consumer-friendly" terms instead of A+ and A++.
For any portal to be effective, Raina suggests it must be dedicated exclusively to a vertical market. What's more, it must offer content, commerce, customization and community. Customization and community are related, he notes; and in the case of ebix, there is my.ebix which can be customized by the individual user to supply specific stock quotes, news and weather.
The features and functions available through the ebix.com portal aren't too sophisticated for the "average" agent, according to Raina. "Agents have to get an MVR from somewhere . . . why not ebix? Agents can get it all in one place. This (ebix) actually simplifies things for agents--they don't have to go to a number of sites.
"The insurance industry is one of the largest contributors to the U.S. economy with an approximate size of more than $1.5 trillion," Raina notes. "Technology has already streamlined and simplified business processes in finance and banking. Yet, the insurance industry has not kept pace with these other industries in terms of the role of technology in streamlining operations. The insurance industry is arguably the last of the major business cornerstones to harness the power of the Internet."
Raina concludes: "The success of this project won't be measured by revenue numbers. Success will be measured in terms of the industry taking a step forward toward the Internet. The industry hasn't been quick to adopt the Internet. This is the first time an organization has tried to take the industry forward toward the Internet in a major manner. Others have done it in pieces and small steps. We're trying to take one big step forward for the industry as a whole." *
For more information ...
Delphi Information Systems
Atlanta, Georgia
Web site: www.ebix.com
Phone: (770) 392-0221
©COPYRIGHT: The Rough Notes Magazine, 1999