Delivery Strategies Briefs

By Diana Garber

AgencyPort (Boston), a provider of agency extranet solutions, was selected by the Tower Insurance Company of New York (New York) to automate the rating, quoting, binding and policy issuance of Tower products for new business, renewals and endorsements. Tower will partner with AgencyPort to develop new applications and improve existing functionality within AgencyPort's KeyOnce software, which helps insurance providers lower the cost associated with distribution. Tower Insurance provides a range of P&C products in the New York metropolitan area.

Trinity Universal Insurance Co. (Chicago), a subsidiary of Unitrin Inc. (Chicago), has acquired the personal lines property/casualty business of the Kemper Insurance companies, which includes the stock of Kemper's direct distribution personal lines subsidiaries (the business unit that sells personal automobile insurance to consumers over the Internet). Kemper's Individual and Family Group business unit specializes in the sale of personal automobile and homeowners' insurance through independent agents. The purchase price was approximately $45 million plus 1 percent of premiums written over a three-year period beginning Jan. 1, 2003.

NxLight Transaction Network (NTN), a set of customizable services that provide insurance and healthcare organizations with e-transaction and e-commerce capabilities, has been launched by NxLight Inc. (Orem, UT). NTN will be available through license agreements to allow companies to have access to complete e-commerce solutions without heavy infrastructure investments. NTN's resources span both offline and online services, the company says, allowing transactions to migrate between stand-alone PCs, local-area networks (LANs) and wide-area networks (WANs). According to Brent Israelsen, NxLight co-founder and CEO, "the key factors that enable full e-transactions are the ability to integrate components from multiple data sources and organizations, combined with the ability to provide any level of risk management or privacy required. NxLight delivers real-time transactions either as a Web service, through NTN, or as an enterprise platform solution.

CT Insurance Services, a New York-based CT Corp. company, released its single-entry, multiple company interface (SEMCI) for the PINnacle Xchange application. With the SEMCI system, insurance brokers, dealers and distributors can create a single compliance transaction and submit it to multiple carriers. This eliminates a repetitive data entry while reducing the turnaround time for appointments, according to CT Insurance Services. CT also will manage money settlement with states, which frees carriers and distributors from the jobs associated with cutting checks for state fees. PINnacle Xchange streamlines the producer contracting and compliance process by automating workflows among the insurance carrier, its distribution and the state departments of insurance.