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Brethren Mutual Insurance Company

Advanced Billing Notice Modification

The Advanced Billing notice modification allows the Brethren Mutual Insurance Company to send its customers detailed notices explaining the transactions that transpired and the impact of these transactions to their account. These notices reflect important customer information, such as agent, amounts due, due date, possible cancellation information, reinstatement information and more.   Numerous notices are utilized for various situations, such as installment billings, endorsements, cancellations, reinstatements, returned checks and audits. Each notice must meet certain criteria. There are also numerous notices that have additional DAP criteria, which can lead to different information being printed on similar notice types. Brethren issues all policies on a Temporary Bill status.  Policyholders are offered multiple pay plans to select from. These pay plans are based on total policy premiums. Installment billing notices are then produced at each installment based on the pay plan selected at the beginning of the term. Subsequent transactions could produce additional notices, such as endorsement notices for additional or return premium, lapse notices, cancellation notices for non-pay, reinstatement notices with or without money due, and various returned check or electronic payment notices. Brethren also processes audits on several lines of business. These transactions produce different notices based on the result of the audit. This modification improves the communication between the company and its publics. A more detailed billing invoice is available, and various payment options are displayed in detail to help reduce non-pay situations by giving clients more ways to budget their funds. Important information, such as reason for invoice, due dates and minimum payment amounts, are conveniently displayed on the invoice, minimizing confusion and questions. This saves time and money by reducing the communications between the client, agent and company.

Chubb & Son

Workers’ Compensation — Unique Anniversary Rating Date by State

Chubb & Son, a division of Federal Insurance Company, sponsored an Innovation Community project to allow for processing of a unique anniversary rating date by state for workers’ compensation policies. Chubb worked closely with CSC to enhance the POINT IN and Agency Link systems to support its large multi-state policies. The enhancement required extensive coordination between POINT IN and Agency Link as it involved complex rating changes, numerous screen changes and a conversion program to address existing policies.

Chubb recognized this enhancement would benefit its insured clients by allowing it to write only one policy per named insured. This, in turn, reduced the insured’s premium. In addition, the enhancement helped to reduce the number of bureau criticisms related to multiple anniversary rating dates.

Chubb recognizes the importance of constant process improvement and the benefits that can be achieved by partnering with CSC on Innovation Community items to broaden scope

Federated Mutual Insurance

Exceed Third-Party Claims Billing

Federated has partnered with CSC to expand the scope of Exceed Billing. By the end of 2010, Exceed Billing will be able to bill for claim receivables (resulting from third-party claims) in addition to premium. This enhancement provides real Account Billing as all of an insured’s property and casualty obligations are available on a single invoice. This Innovation Community initiative automates the creation of Billing Agreements and scheduling of Billing Items. While Federated plans to leverage this for billing claims, other companies may find it useful for billing memberships, sundries and the like. Federated is very excited about the value this enhancement will bring. Look for an upcoming release to take advantage of this new feature.

Florida Peninsula Insurance Company

Marshall & Swift/Boeckh Real-Time Integration with Agency Link

Florida Peninsula worked with CSC to enhance Agency Link by adding a real-time link to order replacement cost reports from Marshall & Swift/Boeckh (MSB). The link automatically returns actual replacement cost information to the application in a format that can be used for both analysis and automated underwriting. After the policy is bound, the MSB quote number is automatically converted to the policy number for easy retrieval by agents and underwriters. Reports can be accessed, viewed and updated in Agency Link, and hard copies are stored and available for reference within Media Management.

In 2010, Florida Peninsula also introduced Agency Link enhancements to give agents real-time access to the MSB replacement cost report, which is maintained with the policy. Agents are now able to easily view, edit and update the MSB replacement cost report during an endorsement.

Automatic ordering of MSB replacement cost reports is important because it provides significant cost savings to agents and underwriters. The process of viewing, changing and updating replacement cost information is now blended seamlessly with the application, saving agents time and money. Underwriters are better able to verify the information in replacement cost reports to ensure accuracy and completeness. Replacement cost estimates are automatically updated each year by inflation factors and during the endorsement process. Creating, storing and updating policy replacement costs have been greatly simplified with Florida Peninsula’s Innovation Community enhancement to integrate the MSB link into Agency Link’s new business and endorsement workflow for agents and underwriting.

Indiana Farm Bureau

Ensure Correct Homeowners Third-Party Billing

Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance (IFBI) bills approximately 45 percent of its homeowners line of business to mortgage companies. Many companies bill the same percentage or higher. It is critical for mortgagee information on the policy to match the third-party information on the bill account so that the correct mortgage company will receive the bill.

Problem: When IFBI received a notice of mortgagee change, the end user made the change in the policy and then had to make the corresponding change in the bill account, or else they utilized a homegrown solution outside of Exceed to complete the change. This workflow depended on the end user recognizing the situation, and knowing and then executing the correct two-step workflow. At one time, approximately 8 percent of IFBI’s homeowners policies were being billed to incorrect mortgagees. IFBI completed a cleanup and began monitoring the situation weekly and correcting when needed.

Solution: IFBI recognized that the workflow described above was inefficient and was sometimes performed incorrectly. Over the last 5 years, the volume of refinancing activities significantly increased, and IFBI experienced a corresponding increase in mortgagee changes. IFBI defined a solution and completed an Innovation Community item, Ensure Correct Homeowners Third-Party Billing.

The new workflow involves one step. Now, when the user processes a mortgagee change on the policy, the third-party number on the bill account automatically updates. Users initiate the transaction one time; no duplicate entries are required. This decreases the risk of billing the wrong mortgagee company for a homeowners policy.

MCIC of Vermont

Legal Solutions Suite to RISKMASTER X Enhancements

MCIC partnered with CSC for several Legal Solutions Suite Innovation Community projects over the past year.  These enhancements have helped CSC to further develop Legal Solutions Suite into the robust system it is today.  MCIC has helped on enhancements such as:

• Legal Solutions Suite Organization Level Security. This provides a means to specify by user group that access to information is restricted to the division or the division office the user is set up in. A user group that is not restricted would have access to data for all divisions and offices. This enhancement would allow other companies to segregate data by their internal hierarchal structure.

• RISKMASTER push of vendor data to Legal Solutions Suite. This will allow for an easier implementation process since vendors would not need to be setup in Legal Solutions Suite, they would just be pushed to Legal Solutions Suite. 

• Single sign-on to RISKMASTER and Legal Solutions Suite. This allows parallel access to Legal Solutions Suite when a user is logged into RISKMASTER.

Michigan Insurance Company

Go Green Initiative: Online Access to Policy Documents with E-mail Notifications

In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect to get information when they want it, how they want it and without waiting. To help meet this need for speed, Michigan Insurance Company partnered with CSC to expand the use of the Agency Link customer payment portal add-on.

In this newly released enhancement, customers can apply payments to their policies using a credit card, checking account or savings account. They can also access PDFs of all policy documents, including invoices, endorsements, renewals, new business and proof of insurance cards. The latest feature to be added gives customers the ability to opt in for paperless delivery of all materials (except materials required by regulation to be delivered by certified mail). When customers choose to ‘go green’ or paperless, they provide the portal with an e-mail address. A security prompt asks customers to confirm that they actually want to go paperless. Customers are also presented with, and must accept, a ‘terms of use’ document. After the paperless opt-in registration is completed, customers receive e-mail notices in place of printed documents sent via the U.S. Postal Service.

Michigan Insurance Company typically generates more than 6 million pages of printed materials each year. In addition, the company sends more than 1 million other printed items — perforated invoices, large mailing envelopes, window envelopes and return envelopes — to customers. If just 10 percent of customers accept electronic delivery, the company estimates it could eliminate nearly 700,000 pages of paper each year. The environmental impact of this will be to save more than 80 trees a year. The company will also reduce expenses for print, distribution and postage by roughly $100,000 annually.

For Michigan Insurance Company, going green is the right thing. Not only is the company providing a service to customers, they are reducing expenses and helping to save the environment along the way.

Montana Municipal Interlocal Authority

Preparation and Implementation for MMSEA Reporting

In July 2009, the Montana Municipal Interlocal Authority began its process to install the CSC Data Analytics tool to provide an avenue for CMS Medicare-mandated reporting. One year later, the organization is in a production status with CMS and ready to begin sending records. This was not an easy task. Like most, the MMIA had many man hours of data entry and data cleanup, and relatively short notice to implement this mandate. To prepare for the implementation, the organization’s goal was to first learn about it, study the new required data elements, gain "buy in" from end users (who were doing all the hard work), and begin the process of cleanup in order to begin testing with CMS. The MMIA is the reporting agency for five RREs within four distinct RISKMASTER databases. Its five RREs consist of Montana Cities and Towns, Counties, Schools (General Claims Only), and Montana State Fund employees (Workers’ Compensation Only). This represents a large portion of the Montana workforce. To say the least, this was a huge project for the MMIA. It was important to continue monitoring and encouraging the staff to complete the cleanup. As a result of MMIA’s hard work, the organization is in a position to provide guidance to other members of the RISKMASTER Community who choose to use the same approach. The MMIA feels its relationship with CSC is one of respect and admiration, and the organization’s suggestions to CSC for possible changes and enhancements are given thorough evaluation for possible implementation.

Safety Insurance Group

Business Intelligence Solutions to Power Aggressive Growth

Through the innovative use of Business Analytics, Dashboards and Data Replication, Safety Insurance Group has distinguished itself as second-to-none among its peers for exploiting Business Intelligence Solutions (BIS) to power aggressive growth and communication goals. Safety’s use of BIS has allowed it to transform massive amounts of mainframe data into meaningful information displayable on visually attractive server-based reports, allowing for quick and intelligent decisions to be made from the most current data.  Dashboards, in turn, graphically portray complex data relationships to permit quick and easy interpretation, thereby streamlining business-critical decision-making and status communications throughout the organization. Safety also was able to reduce operating and development costs by an innovative strategy involving the replication of mainframe data and processes on inexpensive servers, where multiple clone environments replace much of the work that formerly took place on the mainframe.  And because virtually unlimited testing can be conducted in parallel environments on the servers, Safety has been able to realize tremendous speed-to-market advantages as well.

Safeway, Inc

Safeway RISKMASTER X Implementation Project

Safeway and CSC partnered in November 2007 to implement RISKMASTER X, and went live on February 16, 2010. Along with several custom solutions identified to meet Safeway’s business needs, 17 additional solutions provide exceptional benefits to the CSC RISKMASTER X user community.

The Safeway-CSC team worked tirelessly for nearly 3 years analyzing the business needs of the Liability and Worker’s Compensation groups. Through the process of effective gap analysis sessions, and requirement gathering and design, areas of enhancement were identified that have made RISKMASTER X r7 even more robust, flexible and valuable to the user community.

The Innovation Community enhancements range from somewhat simple to very complex designs. For instance, RISKMASTER X base policy functionality now allows for the jurisdiction state to be a multi-code field and for entity e-mail address information to display on the broker and insurer information tabs along with the policy insurer screen.

Another enhancement allows users to edit notes for a defined number of hours after first entering information. New functionality also allows users to track changes made to values in supplemental fields through the use of a supplemental grid. RISKMASTER X now has the ability to track changes to litigation status. Incident time can be tracked according to the time zone in which the incident occurred, so call center personnel no longer have to convert the time manually.

The system now allows for OSHA claims to be tracked as privacy cases on the OSHA log. Confidential claims functionality allows for claims to be marked as confidential, with access granted only to designated individuals with permission to view those claims. RISKMASTER X functionality also makes it possible for entities to retain multiple addresses, and for users to mark any of the addresses as the primary address. Upon claim closure, a warning message is displayed to the user if certain criteria are met while closing a claim. The Safeway-CSC team generated additions to the diary screen functionality and the addition of a reserve worksheet. Payment and reserve authority levels now allow for supervisory approvals of payments and reserves inclusive of diary and e-mail notifications.

Safeway is a leader in the industry and together with CSC is cutting industry costs through the efficiency and use of RISKMASTER X. Through collaboration with the Innovation Community, the Safeway-CSC team fostered a true partnership to add or enhance 17 areas of functional design.

Tampa General Hospital

Web Form Implementing

Tampa General Hospital has worked with CSC to implement Web Forms, and hospital staff made numerous suggestions for enhancements. To make Web Forms more usable hospital-wide, staff suggested an expanded event indicator field and description field. They also suggested having the reporting department automatically notified under e-mail notification, where the nurse unit is first choice. Hospital staff also pointed out that the supervisor follow-up field should include a user ID stamped to the event, so that risk management staff could confirm identities.

Tampa General told CSC it would be helpful to add e-mail addresses to the administrative tracking table. Staff also discovered several limitations with Web Forms and called them to CSC’s attention for correction. For instance, they noticed that whenever they entered event type, it reverted to the ‘patient’ designation even when the person involved was a hospital visitor. And they noticed several cases where ‘time of day’ listed for physician notification and VP comment on incident were inaccurate. They realized that entering only the last two digits of the calendar year was causing the problem, and they asked CSC to correct it.

Hospital staff also said they needed to be able to view event categories in chronological order, by code, not description, and they wanted to be able to add additional categories as needed. They also requested that RISKMASTER allow users to makes edits within the ‘person involved’ field, rather than having to add a new ‘patient involved’ each time. Tampa General also suggested that it would be helpful to highlight the code in use in table maintenance.

Tennessee Farm Bureau

Exceed Claims Third-Party Vendor Assignments, Commercial Lines and Common Policy Interfaces

Tennessee Farm Bureau partnered with CSC on three major Innovation Community projects to add exciting new functions to Exceed Claims.

• Exceed Claims customers can now search for, select, assign and view third-party vendor assignments such as automobile repair shops, glass repair shops and rental car companies. This aids adjusters by eliminating duplicate sign-on to the vendor system as well as duplicate entry and the potential for keying errors. The foundation is now in place for more vendors to be added through this integration between Exceed Claims and Claims Desktop.

• Customers will now be able to process commercial lines using Exceed Claims for the following lines of business: commercial automobile, business owners, commercial general liability, commercial package, commercial property, crime, inland marine and umbrella (personal and commercial). This project also redefined the claim type into three broad categories for Exceed personal and commercial claims processing — automobile, property and liability. This makes it easier to define the claim type without considering the line of business.

• Exceed Claims now has a common policy interface that allows customers to use Exceed Claims with a non-Exceed policy administration system for personal and commercial lines of business. This interface will be used to provide policy data such as policy/unit/coverage and related client information required for claims processing.

Tower Group Companies and Western National Insurance Company

Hold Direct Bill Commission Payments Until the Final Audit Premium Is Paid in Full

Tower and Western National identified a business case where a POINT IN system enhancement would aid in their collections and improve cash flow. Western National and Tower partnered with CSC on a consortium Innovation Community project to introduce functionality for holding direct bill commission payments on final audits until the audit is paid in full. This enhancement will not only defer the agent commission until the final audit premium is paid, it will also provide an incentive for the agent to assist in collecting the audit premium.

With this feature, POINT IN will automatically track final audit balances and place the agent’s commission on hold, at the policy level, until the policy balance is paid in full. When the final audit balance becomes less than or equal to zero, the commission will be automatically released to the agent. New ‘hold/release commission’ screens were developed to not only assist end users in tracking the held commission, but also in allowing them to manually hold and release commissions at the policy level.

Uni-Ter Underwriting Management Corp.

RISKMASTER Innovation Community/Custom Development

Uni-ter Underwriting Management Corp. (UUMC) is in the process of transitioning all of its underwriting, policy administration and claims processing systems to RISKMASTER X release 6. CSC and UUMC are working together on customizations, and with the Innovation Community to design an enhanced RISKMASTER product that will allow UUMC to reduce operational costs while improving efficiency.

Integrating all facets of the business will improve continuity and structure within the organization. UUMC has used the expertise that CSC has earned through its 50 years of industry experience to evaluate its business practices and establish guidelines to ensure that day-to-day operations are handled consistently and adequately. As a result of this process, UUMC has determined that integrating additional CSC products may be desired to achieve the all-inclusive system that would set UUMC apart from its competitors. A second phase project plan has already been initiated.

Vaco Insurance Program

Property Claims

Candidates for the Innovation Community Award have partnered with CSC on an Innovation Community project that has benefitted not only the company itself, but the wider customer community as well. Vaco Insurance Group partnered with the CSC Innovation Community to develop the new RISKMASTER X Property module. This solution enables users to search for specific properties, and report and track property maintenance issues through new entity tables and fields.

A line of business for property claims was developed that includes a property tab allowing users to associate properties to a claim and also pull up a property history screen. Additionally, property validation is provided based on the policy selection for a property claim. The property module supports all RISKMASTER X toolbar applications. Business Intelligence updates to support all property claim and property entity data are also included.