ACORD LOMA 2009: FirstBest Launches Standalone Agency-facing Solution

FirstBest (Bedford, Mass.) has announced that it will offer FirstBest Agent as a standalone solution, apart from its flagship Underwriting Management System (UMS) solution.

The Agent solution is a point-of-sale portal for both new business and renewals with functionality that includes dynamic supplemental data, shared documents and attachments, notes and e-mail notifications. In addition, the solution provides rules support in areas such as market reservation/clearance, pre-qualification, risk appetite, risk eligibility, agent authority quoting and binding rules.

As part of the announcement, FirstBest also announced that the solution features the new FirstBest App Forms Reader, an automatic form image translator that transforms ACORD form PDFs or images into XML. The new forms reader also allows instant upload directly from the agent's desktop to the carrier.

FirstBest founder and CTO Julian Pelenur says the vendor decided to offer the FirstBest Agent solution as a standalone product in response to carrier requests. "While there is less collaboration within the submission and quote process without the FirstBest Underwriter, this option will allow carriers to achieve faster ROI...with the option to easily upgrade to the complete UMS with full underwriting and real-time collaboration functionality," Pelenur said in a press release.