Digging for Dollars
Portals and Predictive Underwriting
For Hartford-based insurer The Hartford (with revenues of $27.1 billion) -- whose P&C distributors include independent agents and brokers that also distribute other carriers' products -- remaining competitive means pricing products appropriately and providing its producers with tools to ensure ease of doing business with the carrier. "One of our biggest challenges is continuing to reduce the time it takes to extend our business rules to various distribution channels," says Jim Rogers, director of e-business technology at The Hartford.
To make sure its distributors have the product and sales information they need on hand, The Hartford built the Electronic Business Center (EBC), an agency Web portal. From that portal agents can access ICON 2.0, an agency quoting and submission tool for small commercial insurance, and The Hartford ExpressWay, an electronic quoting tool for personal lines. Both ExpressWay and ICON 2.0 were built in-house, leveraging service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services to support the company's growing business, according to Rogers. "These are tools our agents use to access virtually everything they want to know about The Hartford," he says. "They can find out what products we have, see how they work, look up information about certain accounts and process transactions."
The Hartford also supplies its internal sales representatives, who provide sales support to independent agents and serve as liaisons with The Hartford, with wireless laptops to help them work with agents. With wireless, sales representatives have instant access to marketing materials and reports, such as complete access to agents' daily schedules and pertinent information for sales calls, including cross-selling opportunities, as well as individual and company sales and compensation statistics. "We are restructuring how we work with our sales representatives" and improving the process for them, says Rogers. "Wireless is very useful with this because it lets us maximize our sales representatives' time, allowing them to plan better, reduce the number of follow-up activities and spend a greater portion of their time working productively with agents."
Additionally, to price the product more appropriately to the client's needs, The Hartford employs a predictive underwriting model. The model, which went live for small business lines in October 2005, provides customized prices for The Hartford's business owners policy, auto and workers' compensation products. "The model was developed in-house and leverages our rules engine," Rogers notes. "It has proven itself successful and has contributed to our double-digit growth this year."
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