Harleysville Taps AQS

To facilitate the launch of new commercial lines products and provide greater ease of use to its agents, Harleysville Insurance (Harleysville, Pa.) will replace its legacy system with AQS's (Hartland, Wis.) AQS/advantage suite.

"This is part of a long-term strategy to make it convenient and easy for the agent to submit new business for us," says Akhil Tripathi, CIO and senior VP for Harleysville Insurance (with total assets of $3.7 billion).

Due to changing agent expectations, Harleysville Insurance began searching for a Web-based system with rating capabilities last April. After a comprehensive selection process, Harleysville selected AQS/advantage this month. "This system is the best choice because it will strengthen our ability to launch products while also supporting our current product lines," affirms Tripathi.

Components of the AQS/advantage suite include AQS/advantage, a policy administration system; AQS/advantage Integrator, an integration solution that incorporates ACORD standards; and AQS/advantage Product manager, a self-maintenance tool that utilizes ISO's integrator system, an electronic method for delivering rate rule updates. The product is also based on a Microsoft (Redmond, Wash) .NET platform, which will provide Harleysville Insurance's agents with Internet access to streamline workflow for business submissions.

Currently, Harleysville Insurance is in the process of planning for deployment of the AQS/advantage suite. Tripathi hopes that will be completed by this time next year. He declines to put a date on the overall legacy conversion. "We are still working through the plan on how this will fit into all of our current systems," Tripathi says. "Our expectation is that this will eventually support all of our commercial line products."