Commonwealth Auto Reinsurers Enjoys Five-Fold Improvement with GT Software Solution

Commonwealth Automobile Reinsurers (CAR, Boston) has deployed GT Software's (Atlanta) Ivory Data Access Solution to improve mainframe data transfer performance to address data quality and eliminate the need for reruns of work that failed to upload during overnight batch processing. The implementation has resulted in a five-fold improvement in performance, according to the carrier.

CAR processes massive amounts of data, both as a statistical agent processing Massachusetts private passenger auto premium and loss statistics and as the industry-operated residual market for motor vehicle insurance, according to a GT Software press release. Quality and timeliness in the handling of that data are critical as the Massachusetts Division of Insurance constantly evaluates the information, the vendor says.

A growing volume of the data CAR handled created congestion and caused an error recovery problem whereby a number of Web reports would be unavailable at critical times, according to GT Software. An abnormal stop during nightly batch processing would necessitate restarting jobs in the morning, resulting in delays that threatened CAR's compliance service level agreements.

GT Software reports that Ivory Data Access replaced a legacy software product that had become inadequate and CAR's internal IT department implemented the Ivory Data Access Administrative Console on a server that was hosting Microsoft SQL Server; the ODBC component was installed on the CAR web servers and the workstations of a number of CAR users. Also, with the help of Ivory Data Access, data collection is now accomplished on the Web, and then uploaded to the mainframe, which is still used for the heavy number-crunching. This summarized information is then downloaded to SQL Server and made available to CAR's customers (insurance companies) on its Web site.

"A five-fold performance improvement makes life a lot easier — it's like replacing a back road with a superhighway. No more traffic lights or stop signs," says Peter McCabe, director of applications development. "It's like replacing a back road with a superhighway. No more traffic lights or stop signs."

"Ivory Data Access makes life a lot easier for me and my staff," adds McCabe. "It is a critical part of our technology landscape. Using this GT Software solution, we are more reliable and responsive to our customer needs."

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