West Point Underwriters Selects DRC's Decision Maker Rating Enterprise

West Point Underwriters (WPU, Pinellas Park, Florida), an MGA and backroom processing operation for personal and commercial insurers, has selected Decision Research's (DRC, Honolulu) DecisionMaker Rating Enterprise solution. WPU will use the DecisionMaker (DM) Rating Enterprise toolset to enable business users to model, manage and analyze rates for WPU's lines of business across all states, according to a DRC news release.

"DM Rating Enterprise provides us the flexibility to support the wide variety of customized rate plans we offer," comments Paul Clayson, CIO, WPU. "Because the solution places rate control in the hands of the business group, we can react quickly to external changes and adjust rates with minimal reliance on our IT resources. And, given that DRC's solution is built on an SOA foundation, we are also able to easily call the rating service from other systems."

Commenting on the successfully completed proof of concept with DM Rating Enterprise, a key component of WPU's evaluation and selection process, according to the DRC source, Clayson added, "No smoke and mirrors here. We wanted to be sure of the solution's fit, so I requested that DRC host our rates on their rating service while our system generated the rate requests. We found the response time and quote accuracy to be impressive."

"After seeing the proof of concept completed, we are confident that DM Rating Enterprise will substantially reduce our overhead for managing rates and rules and will also reduce the time to roll out new rates and programs for our customers," remarks Dan Hurley, vice president of compliance, WPU. "With the DRC solution, I believe that we will be in an even better position to service our customers and quickly react to the constant changes in our marketplace."

Karen Yamamoto, DRC's executive vice president, comments, "We are delighted to be aligned with West Point Underwriters. Given the marketplace and companies that WPU supports, it was important that they be able to quickly respond to the constant pricing changes and competitive challenges. By empowering the business users to translate rates and underwriting rules, the risk of error is substantially reduced, speed to market is improved, and dependence on the IT staff is minimized."

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