AgencyPort Co-CEO on Name Change from Sword

Sword Insurance announced today that its name is being changed to AgencyPort Software. While the major impetus for the change — to the company's original name, mind you —'is that it was sold by its parent company, Sword Group to the private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, it wasn't as simple as just getting the band back together, co-CEO Steve Hauck told Insurance & Technology shortly before the name change was official

"As we closed this deal, we were trying to decide how to tie this all together in a name," he says. "And the themes that we kept coming back to were a lot about the brand equity that AgencyPort had created in the US. We're really excited about being able to take advantage of the brand equity AgencyPort has and extend that in the new and different way."

That brand equity includes a reputation for forward thinking that the company wanted to leverage, Hauck adds. The company has made upgrades to its Turnstile offering, which turns ACORD forms submitted in PDF form into ACORD XML; and plans to concentrate on mobile enablement over the next six months.

"Our vision going forward is to take advantage of our position around AgencyPort for the front end, because we believe that a component-based strategy is the future for insurance," Hauck adds. "It's doing things like Turnstile or around mobile and making that front end even more valuable for a carrier."

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio