QBE Case Study

Background
SQBE, a major insurer across Europe, were looking to purchase an insurance processing platform which would support its chosen full cycle e-traded business channels and products to push into their non traditional market of SME in the UK.

The Acturis story so far
Following an exhaustive selection process QBE signed with Acturis at the beginning of August 2008.

Central to the choice of Acturis were;

By early January 2009 QBE had accepted their first fully electronically traded policies on the Acturis platform and by February 2009 the first phase of 5 e-traded products were live. These included Professional Indemnity as well as Tradesman, Offices and Business Combined cover.

Summary
Following this initial successful development and deployment QBE will now carry out a staged launch programme to Acturis Brokers throughout 2009 and continue to develop new and innovative products to support their aggressive expansion plans in this market.

Broker Network Case Study

Background
Since 1994, Broker Network has been enabling its member brokers to enjoy the same advantages of market buying power available formerly only to the larger intermediary.

As of Sept 2008, Broker Network has more than 210 member brokers with premium income in excess of £500 million, including 20 wholly owned brokerages within Broker Network Insurance Brokers.

The Acturis story so far
After an extensive evaluation process and pilot exercise in 2003/4, the independent members of Broker Network elected Acturis as their preferred IT platform.

Acturis is now the most commonly used broker software amongst the independent members and Broker Network have also developed additional services to support this important group. For example, accounting and banking arrangements can be simplified by Broker Network being able to access data from a central point. Additionally areas such as compliance, training, and corporate documentation are now all streamlined for more effective delivery. Broker Network Acturis users also have a significant group voice in shaping the future development of Acturis.

In addition to the independent members, the wholly owned business of Broker Network Insurance Brokers also utilises Acturis for 100% of its business.

Summary
The connection with Broker Network is a very important one for Acturis, not only because of its ‘blue chip’ nature but also because so many independent members have chosen to use Acturis voluntarily. These members that range in size from 1 to 30 users, prove the attraction of Acturis to brokers of all shapes and sizes.

As at September 2008, over 700 Broker Network individual users are reliant on Acturis on a day-to-day basis.

Swinton Commercial Case Study

Executive Summary
On the 5th March 2007, Swinton Commercial moved on to the Acturis system to enable its efficient growth in the Commercial SME sector.

Highlights of the process are as follows:

• Project delivered on time and to budget, with 80 people live and trading from 9am on Day 1
• Increase in size of connected SME product set
• Improvement in quote conversion ratio
• Monthly revenue up in a softening market
• Broker acquisition process established to further assist in the growth of the Commercial SME sector
• Major impact on both the overall market integrated trading performance
• Major improvement in customer service

Project delivery
The project to implement Acturis within Swinton Commercial was agreed at the end of August 2006 and on the 5th March 2007, with a team of 80 placing business across 7 integrated and autorated SME product categories supplied by a panel of 9 insurers. Business traded includes, Shop, Office, Surgeries, Tradesmans, Restaurant, Public House, Hotel/Guest House, Working from Home, Hairdressers, as well as smaller Commercial Combined and Motor Trade risks.

Increase in connected product lines
Prior to going live on Acturis, Swinton used to place business via a stand-alone quote engine that required re-keying by the Insurer, as well as re-keying into the Swinton back-office system. Such re-keying is no longer required, either by the integrated insurer, nor by Swinton, as Acturis fully integrated package.

Improvement in quote conversion ratio
Since Swinton went live onto Acturis, the monthly policy count has increased dramatically through an increase in the conversion ratio.

Increase in revenue
In a softening market, where average premiums have fallen, monthly revenue has increased regardless.

Broker acquisition process
Swinton and Acturis have initiated an agreed cost and project process whereby Swinton can grow by acquisition as well as organically. This process allows Swinton to seamlessly integrate the commercial business that it acquires within its current commercial call centre, or indeed keep a separate office open that is automatically connected into the same Acturis system.

Impact on the overall market
As a result of Swinton going live on Acturis, imarket quote volumes have increased exponentially. Swinton has been a major influence in the overall adoption of the imarket process and as a result of the work that Swinton has undertaken with its partner insurers, other Acturis brokers have also benefited through increased usage of better products.

Major improvement in customer service
As a result of these changes, customer service has improved in two key dimensions:

Giles Insurance Brokers Case Study

Introduction
In March of 2004, Giles Insurance Brokers (Giles) made the decision to install the Acturis Broker Platform to its 240 person strong commercial team in 18 locations across the UK.

By the end of October 2004 the Acturis Broker Platform was fully live and Giles was using Acturis as its sole means of transacting commercial business.

This result has been achieved with the minimum of upfront investment and risk to Giles as a business, and all challenging deadlines, both in terms of cost and timescales have been met.

Since October 2004, Giles and Acturis have continued to work closely together, and already Giles has seen benefits in terms of processing efficiency, transparency of management information across the group, and also benefits in demonstrating FSA compliance across a continually growing organisation.

Growth continues at pace. As at September 2008, Giles had over 700 employees using Acturis to perform their day-to-day roles.

Pre Go-Live Project planning
Giles was very keen to get the new system in place and well bedded in, in advance of January 2005 and the FSA. This was the key driver in terms of the project and both teams bought into a September to October go-live window.

The 3 key blockers in achieving this goal were as follows:

As a result of these constraints, a 4 step go-live programme was agreed, based on a mix of location and system. The English offices using the bespoke system would be first to go-live on 6th September. The Scottish offices using CDL were to go-live next on the 27th September, with the users of the other systems, following in two stages on the 11th October and the 25th October.

Both Giles and Acturis appointed a Project Manager, and key responsibilities for the many different issues that needed to be dealt with were passed on to other key people within Giles and Acturis; i.e. How should the system be tailored for Giles? What insurers & products needed to be built in? What should the Giles documents look like? How could Giles’ preferred premium finance provider be integrated? How could Giles-specific schemes be built in time?

Acturis and Giles managed to hit every deadline and as a result all users went live on the very date that was detailed in the original plan.

Post Go-Live Partnership
In many IT projects, the go-live date is the end of the project process between IT supplier and customer. This is not true in this case.

Giles has some very clear goals in its use of Acturis:

• Increased efficiencies in the issue of marketing and client presentations
• Faster and more effective management information, to ensure that the critical measures for Giles are instantly available
• FSA regulation, to ensure that all commercial handlers were trading in a compliant manner
• Facilitation of growth by acquisition

Acturis and Giles have worked very hard together to ensure that the project is a success for both parties.

Efficiency Savings
The first 12 months of the project required Giles to enter risk data into pre-built risk capture templates that allow insurer submission documents, client statement of demands and needs and client risk registers to be created in a uniform and instant way.

• Better integration with Microsoft Office (Word, Outlook, Excel etc)
• Improved processing of scheme business
• XML integration with its chosen Premium Finance provider, making the financing of premiums far quicker
• Far more efficient handling of commercial business

Management Information
Even from the first month, Giles has been able to report on data within a day of the month end; data which had previously taken between 1 and 2 weeks to consolidate from the various systems previously used by Giles.

As well as the high level financial management reporting, Giles has also been able to access reports on revenue and claims by insurer and class of business, outstanding tasks by office, team and handler, reports on business won and lost and also on renewal activity/business invoiced.)

Giles and Acturis are now in the process of working together to see where the current level of reporting can be further enhanced, as now that the basic requirements are being satisfied, Giles wants to get increasingly sophisticated in how it can maximise the benefit of the data held within Acturis.

FSA Compliance
As well as being able to access and extract the data required by the FSA, Acturis has enabled a number of processes for Giles:

• Uniform and consistent insurer submission documents for quote purposes
• Integrated Statement of Demands & Needs process
• Automatically created client risk registers, common across all offices
• Improved workflow management, with central visibility across all locations
• Creation of a truly paperless process across the entire commercial team, with all correspondence scanned and stored on Acturis
• Facilitation of growth by acquisition

The phenomenal growth of Giles requires that acquired brokers are put live on Acturis in a controlled and efficient manner. A typical broker will be live on Acturis within 3 months of the acquisition date, with the data migrated from the legacy system, training completed, and scheme products live and trading if required.

Summary
Giles and Acturis operate a genuine partnership and the benefits are clear to both parties. Giles has a system that is efficient, aides compliance and also allows it to grow quickly in a controlled manner. Acturis enjoys user growth through the success of Giles, as well as continued learning from the partnership.

Oval SME Case Study

Background
In September 2005 a strategic decision was made by Oval to move to one insurance provider and one IT system for its SME business. Acturis were asked to put together a high level implementation project work plan for 6 key product builds.

The work involved building the 6 integrated products on the Acturis system with the chosen insurance provider, Allianz.

The project started in October 2005 with the ambition of having all 6 products live by June 2006. Key goals were as follows:

• Deliver the product launches on time
• Deliver the depth of functionality that was required to facilitate the SME business roll-over
• Provided solutions to deliver the required Management Information reports, Claims upload and an automated referral system

The roll-out of the Oval/Allianz Cornhill product range went to plan and within budget. Retailers, Office/Surgery, Contractors, Property Owners/Flats, Commercial Vehicle and Oval Business are all live and successfully trading. This was achieved with supreme teamwork between broker, insurer and software house.

As a result of this initiative, transacting SME business has been revolutionised at Oval, as demonstrated as follows:

A 2nd phase of the project also web-enabled these products, to allow clients to place SME business from the Oval Group website on a "zero-touch" basis.

Square Mile Broking Case Study

From a decision to go-live on Acturis in mid-November 2007, Acturis had the Square Mile Broking business operational and ready to start trading on 9th January 2008.

Once Square Mile Broking had made the decision to go with Acturis things had to move quickly to meet this trading deadline; the new business had to be built on Acturis, users had to be trained, and Square Mile Broking bespoke documents had to be built to allow efficient trading from Day 1.

The key in the overall process was a clear understanding of what Square Mile Broking required, and effective communication between the different work-streams to ensure that the broker build, training and document processes were in clear alignment.

A further key requirement when purchasing Acturis was scalability. In Square Mile Broking’s usage of Acturis to date, workflow management has been an important factor, as has management reporting, and Square Mile Broking’s reliance on these modules will only increase as the business grows.

The most important factor to date, however, has been document management, especially complex documents, such as client registers, insurer submission documents and new business & renewal reports. The Acturis Complex document process ensures as little time as possible is spent on routine paperwork and as much time as possible is spent on developing client relationships and servicing existing customers.

By having professional, branded documents available at the push of a button, Square Mile Broking is able to punch above its weight, and early signs with regard to the growth of this fledgling organisation are very promising, and can be followed in their regular column in Insurance Age.

Giant Risk Solutions Case Study

Giant was one of the first Underwriting Agencies to go-live on Acturis, when it began trading with 10 users in July 2006.

Giant recognised the advantages of the Acturis system in terms of transacting Commercial business to UK brokers, and Giant now handles several million pounds of premium income, with brokers all over the country, including one man brokerages, provincial and regional brokers and major national broking organisations, some of whom are themselves Acturis users.

Policy versioning and a clear document audit trail are vital to Giant, and its feedback has enabled Acturis to further develop its offering to MGAs/Underwriters, with recent developments as follows:

Other recent developments for underwriting agencies also include:

• Ability to deal direct with the end customer on premium finance and credit/debit card, when this is requested by the agent
• Overrides and agent commission at section level within a policy
• Support for net rating added to integrated and autorated products (already available on manually underwritten products)
• Enhanced agent statement and accounts processing
• Agent and introducer access into Acturis for viewing their clients/policies

Jelf Healthcare Case Study

The Jelf Group is a full service consultancy that supports businesses and individuals alike. With teams specialising in General Insurance, Healthcare, Commercial Finance & Financial Services, Jelf offers a wide range of services to customers of all types.

Following the decision of the General Insurance division to opt for Acturis for its Commercial and Personal lines insurance requirements, Jelf Healthcare went through a rigorous IT evaluation process and also elected to use the Acturis system.

The Healthcare Market is not well served by IT; most consider this form of cover to be more akin to Financial Services, yet the policies transacted are more like general insurance products as they are normally renewed annually. Moreover most Intermediaries have homegrown systems that do not scale well or cater for an increasingly connected environment.

As a result of the decision to move to Acturis, Jelf Healthcare now has close to 120 members of staff using Acturis in order to transact their day-to-day business. This has coincided with excellent full year results for the division. Now Acturis and Jelf Healthcare are embarking on an aggressive programme of insurer connectivity within the healthcare market.