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Target Markets Program Administrators Association Vendors NetRate Systems, Inc. For NetRate Systems, Inc., of Okemos, Michigan, the critical factor in becoming a serious player in the automated rating systems vendor field is the willingness to take its product beyond the scope of a simple rating system. President Dave Jordan explains: “In the past, it was possible for vendors to produce an ‘off-the-shelf’ ISO commercial lines rating program, and with very little tweaking, make it successful. There were limited options for carriers, agents, MGAs, or brokers. So anything was better than nothing. We’ve found, though, that our ability to react to custom programming requests, and to tailor our rating programs to fit very specific customer requirements, gives us a niche in the market that hasn’t been well addressed before. Especially at our price level.” NetRate Systems produces rating programs for both personal and commercial lines. Jordan describes the market focus for his products: “Most rating systems vendors today have products that are either designed for use in the retail agency, with limited functionality and subsequent low cost, or designed for use in large carriers, and provide sophisticated functionality...plus carry large price tags. NetRate Systems has designed systems that focus on small to medium sized carriers, along with MGAs and brokers. They carry substantially more functionality than the lower-end systems, while being much more affordable than larger systems.” NetRate rating products are ‘modularized’ to provide a suite of available options which expand the software beyond the status of a simple ‘rate calculator.’ The core components are NetRate’s Rating Modules. They include rating engines for Personal Automobile and Homeowners, and even include a Farmowners product utilized by several farm-focused carriers. Commercial Lines include General Liability, Property, Business Auto, Garage Dealers, Inland Marine, Crime, Workers Compensation, and Businessowners (BOP). Another important component, and a key element in the NetRate rating system philosophy, is the NetBind Policy Life Cycle Module. NetBind allows users to rate/quote proposals, bind quotes to policy status, then transact endorsements, cancellations and reinstatements, and renewals, all without requiring users to ‘remind’ the system about version dates of rates, LCMs, ILFs, or other rating information which changes periodically. Other modules which are interwoven into the NetRate systems are: • NetPOS, a Point-of-Sale submission system which allows brokers or producers to remotely enter risk data and submit it to MGA or carrier-based underwriters to rate and evaluate, using browser-based or client-server technology; • NetXPORT, the .xml data framework which allows easy import/export of rating data into and out of NetRate (NetRate is currently integrating with several third party policy issuance, policy administration, and forms printing vendors, as well as information providers and other rating products); • NetSTAT, a statistical collection module which accumulates statistical coding data flowing from the NetBind module, and provides it to customer MGAs and carriers for reporting to appropriate bureaus. “Carriers and MGAs are looking for software tools to supply their sales entities with Straight-Through Processing, Point-of-Sale Risk Submission, and integration to third party back-end systems,” says Jordan. “NetRate supplies these tools.” Jordan continues, “NetRate Systems has already made an impact in the small carrier/MGA marketplace by providing affordable, sophisticated programs for policy life cycle rate processing and agile, dependable programming and support services.” * |
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