TRAVELERS TIES REAL-TIME POLICY VIEW TO VENDOR SYSTEM

Travelers Property Casualty (Hartford) has launched Electronic Policy View (EPV), a real-time policy view capability accessible to independent commercial agents and brokers through their Applied Systems agency management systems. Using EPV, agents can view images of clients' Travelers commercial lines policies in real time, for research, records and printing purposes.

Real-time policy view capability had already been available on the carrier's proprietary Travelers Agency Portal, but the adaptation of EPV to a vendor agency management system represents a significant workflow improvement for agents and brokers, according to Patrick Gee, Travelers' vice president of operations for small commercial and personal lines. "Instead of the agent having to get out of their agency management system environment, log on to the Travelers platform and navigate, they can simply have the customer up in their agency management system. And by selecting a drop-down, right from within the agency management system, it seamlessly links them up with that customer's policy view," Gee says.

Gee characterizes the EPV as a significant development to Travelers' participation in Applied Systems "Light 'Em Up" SEMCI initiative, dedicated to enabling a variety of real-time agent/carrier transactions through the University Park, IL-based vendor's agency management systems. The carrier already offers loss-run inquiry and claims inquiry functionality. "The policy-view piece is a critical linchpin application, among others, that agents no longer have to leave their management systems for," he asserts.

Travelers hopes to extend such functionality to other agency management vendors' systems, Gee relates. "We want to do this with as many as we can, and we're anxious to do that as soon as the other agency management systems are positioned to do so," he claims. "We're working hard with Windsor, CT-based AMS Services and we'd love to be in a similar position to allow the agents of AMS to take advantage of this capability as soon as they're ready."

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio