Well Connected award

This honor is presented to the organization that has demonstrated leadership through innovation across all award categories for a particular solution.

FBL Financial Group Inc. (Western Agricultural Insurance Company)

Project Title: Protectant Direct Consumer Auto Acquisition
Project Description: FBL Financial Group is a multi-line property and casualty insurer that partnered with CSC to develop an innovative new application to sell its newly branded Protectant Direct Personal Auto insurance directly to the consumer over the Internet. Targeting Generation X and Y consumers in four states, FBL worked with CSC to design a new Web application to facilitate insured self service with supporting BPO customer service. The business plan deployment required the development of a configurable Internet application that utilized as many existing internal or external applications and services as possible. A new virtual company was also created to build the business unit.

The new FBL Web application design is based upon CSC’s Agency Link, POINT IN, Information Ordering, Underwriting Component, Document Production and Media Management application architectures and features real-time consumer policy purchase and management functionality. Features include multi-limit quote capability, automated information ordering, including data pre-fill, automated underwriting, policy purchase and issuance, online review and print of policy documents, insured e-mail functionality, policy inquiry, online chat, electronic payments and endorsement processing. This secured application is available within an open source DotNetNuke portal, hosted on CSC infrastructure and accessible to all Internet consumers.

One key element stressed throughout FBL’s application requirements was the need for configuration flexibility to allow quick adaptation to market changes. Several application innovations were developed to accommodate this business need. The Information Ordering component was enhanced to allow ease of future report ordering selection criteria changes. Embedding the application within a portal facilitates FBL’s ability to quickly update Marketing and Help material content via the DotNetNuke administrator’s role.

Many of the newly developed application pages are metadata-driven. The business layer is configurable using the Underwriting component for navigation, information ordering, edits, field valuation, form selection and online print, as well as for underwriting rules. The data layer is also configurable via metadata definition that adheres to ACORD XML standards.

FBL anticipates that the Web presentation of the new application, along with a strong customer-centric focus by the virtual BPO company, will provide a new avenue of growth acceleration to bring in new clients via this direct distribution channel. As clients’ financial services needs evolve over time, these needs can be met by expanding the relationship to include FBL’s traditional distribution channel and all additional associated services.

Michigan Millers

Project Title: Agency Link Compensation Advisory Organization of Michigan (CAOM) Interface
Project Description: Michigan Millers worked closely with CSC to enhance Agency Link to include an interface to CAOM for Workers’ Compensation quotes. Michigan Millers worked on the detail design and evaluated test cases needed to verify the function. The CAOM Innovation Community project includes an agent view and an underwriter view and is integrated with the Reservation sub-system in Agency Link. The function allows for monthly updates to include new factors and notifies the user when new factors are available as quotes are updated. It broadens the scope of functions available to agents who use the MMIC system and improves the accuracy of the rating factors being applied to the policies.

MAG Mutual Insurance Company

Project Title: Customer Portal
Project Description: To develop a customer portal for its policyholders, MAG Mutual partnered with CSC and leveraged CSC’s offshore team. The customer portal allows policyholders to view current policy data (including billing), view and print policy documents 24x7, request endorsements, make online payments, and receive custom reports that previously required customer service intervention. The salient feature of the site is that it seamlessly integrates multiple disparate systems — from legacy to new, from CSC to third party to MAG Mutual’s in-house systems, and from .NET to iSeries to Oracle — providing a common and transparent experience for the end user. The front end of the portal is .NET and is protected using authentication from Oracle Access Manager. A custom-designed authorization schema allows users to access only their information. The portal leverages an interface with Agency Link to present policy and billing data imported every night from POINT IN. The interface with POINT IN also allows users to access certificates of insurance and receive custom premium reports. A MediaView hook allows users to view their policy documents from within the portal without having to launch MediaView separately.

An interface was developed to MAG Mutual Agency’s Applied system, which manages non-MMIC policies, for a complete view of all policies held by a customer. A real-time interface to the Elavon Online Payment Web site was developed to permit customers to pay outstanding invoices. Users of the portal can also make online requests for policy endorsements, which feed directly into the same ImageRight workflow processes used by the underwriting department for its other policy-related tasks. Another interesting feature of the customer portal is the ability to convert Web pages, reports and policy documents into PDF format at run-time. Users can save the PDFs on their PCs for printing or archiving purposes.

Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance

Project Title: Consolidated Bill
Project Description: Making the billing process easy for the customer is the Holy Grail for many insurance companies. Providing one bill or allowing customers to customize their P&C billing has been a long-term goal for Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance (IFBI). IFBI provides a broad array of P&C products including auto, home, farm, commercial and umbrella, all now delivered through Exceed and POINT IN.

Prior to Consolidated Bill, Exceed policies and POINT IN policies were billed from each system. Exceed allows all policies to be billed from a single bill account or multiple bill accounts. Interfacing POINT IN to Exceed will allow farm and commercial policies to be billed through the powerful Exceed bill account function. Customers with personal lines policies, farm policies and commercial policies can now customize their billing experience from having one bill for all their policies to one bill for each policy or anything in between. As an example, a farm owner can have one bill for personal policies, one bill for farm(s), and one bill for commercial interests, and each can be sent to a unique address and name. Additionally, the customer can mix and match billing modes and save on service fees.

The completed project has been a very big hit for IFBI's customers and CSRs. People have stated that they are thrilled with what IFBI has been able to provide through the synergistic combination of two powerful P&C platforms — POINT IN and Exceed.

Accident Fund Insurance Company of America

Project Title: Quality Assurance Dashboard
Project Description: When CSC and Accident Fund realized that both companies used the same Test Partner automated testing tool, they agreed that it provided an excellent opportunity to develop some metrics to measure the quality of CSC deliverables. During the past year, Accident Fund has implemented a Quality Assurance Dashboard that measures different elements of quality within Accident Fund's test systems. The Test Partner Tool is used to conduct a Smoke Test when a deliverable is received to determine if basic quality levels have been met. Accident Fund provides CSC with a copy of the Smoke Test that can be run by CSC prior to sending the delivery to Accident Fund. Some examples of the items reported in the dashboard include:

  • Test system up-time percentages
  • Time for completion of data clears by CSC for Accident Fund testing
  • Percent of deliveries with documentation
  • Percent of deliveries that have errors
  • Percent of deliveries with code promote issues
  • Issue resolution attempts
  • Percent of critical and serious issues.

The dashboard documents trends, quality expectations through a non-contractual service level standard, and a year-to-date percentage by category. Jointly, CSC and Accident Fund have been able to measure the quality of deliveries and identify areas for improvement. Through the process, quality has improved and is being recognized at all levels within both organizations.

Safeway Inc.

Project Title: RISKMASTER X Implementation
Project Description: Safeway and CSC partnered in November 2007 for the implementation of RISKMASTER X. Along with several custom enhancements, the project team submitted proposed Innovation Community solutions that were identified in response to Safeway’s business needs and will provide exceptional benefit to the CSC customer community as well. The Safeway/CSC team has worked tirelessly for nearly two years in analyzing the business needs of the Liability and Workers’ Compensation groups. Through the process of effective gap analysis sessions and requirement gathering and design, areas of enhancement were identified that will make RISKMASTER X even more robust, flexible and valuable to the users’ community.

The Innovation Community enhancements range from somewhat simple designs to complex development design projects. Enhanced notes will allow notes to be edited for a defined number of hours after being entered. Changes made to values in supplemental fields can be tracked through the use of a supplemental grid. Incident time will be tracked according to the time zone in which the incident occurred, no longer requiring call center personnel to convert the time manually. The system will allow for OSHA claims to be tracked as privacy cases on the OSHA log. Confidential Claims functionality will allow claims to be marked as confidential, granting only designated individuals permission to view those claims. RISKMASTER X functionality will be modified to mark any of the addresses as the “primary” address. Litigation status histories will be maintained. Upon claim closure, a warning message will display to the user if certain criteria are met. Diary Screen functionality will be enhanced, and a Reserve Worksheet will be added. Payment and Reserve Authority Levels will allow for supervisory approvals for payments and reserves, including diary and e-mail notifications.

Safeway is a leader in the industry and, together with CSC, will cut costs through the use of the RISKMASTER X Claim System, while striving toward improved process efficiency. The Safeway/CSC team has worked in collaboration and fostered a true partnership to make the project a success.

Safety Insurance

Project Title: Safety Investment Protection Initiative
Project Description: Safety Insurance has fully embraced the Extend, Enhance and Evolve approach to system modernization. The company continues to find ways to take advantage of new technology that provides business value without the typical disruption and costs associated with most IT initiatives. Safety has modernized its existing systems and has surrounded them with world-class, best-of-breed solutions. Examples include:

  • Implementing STP to allow real-time processing
  • Implementing Agency Link to provide integrated system access for Safety’s agent and customer community
  • Implementing Media Management for document management
  • Implementing Exceed Billing and Claims to provide world-class service to insureds.

Now Safety has implemented “Immediate Print,” which allows its agents to realize the long-sought-after dream of true once-and-done policy issuance. Agents are now able to hand an actual dec page to the insured at the point of sale. Safety believes that insurance should be no different than any other commodity purchase. This project will pay for itself by eliminating print, mail and handling expenses. Safety also implemented a feature called “eCustomer discount” for insureds who no longer wish to receive any paper documents and want to utilize the power of the Internet. These insureds now view all their documents in Media Management. Of Safety’s 750 agents, 387 are utilizing Immediate Print. Currently there are 9,029 policyholders reaping the benefits of the eCustomer discount – 5,336 on auto policies and 3,693 on homeowner policies. The hit rate on the Safety Web site has gone up 52 percent since the implementation of the eCustomer discount. Safety expects an annual savings of $100,000 because of these two enhancements.