Acquiring Automation

American Capitol Insurance (Houston; $98 million in assets) has completed the consolidation of the disparate administration systems it inherited from eight acquisitions in the '90s. Although the carrier examined several vendors' systems, it implemented Professional Data Management Again's (PDMA; Indianapolis) LifePRO Insurance Administration System platform, which it obtained through one of the acquisitions, according to John Cornett, president of American Capitol Insurance.

American Capitol selected LifePRO because it allowed the carrier to maintain the functionality of each of the eight blocks of business converted to the platform, relates Cornett, who explains that the project took six years because of the volume of data involved. Further, the solution provides employees with easy access to data, Cornett adds, enabling the company to automate processing. As a result, "We have been able to reduce our staff by 33 percent," he says.

Automation also helped the insurer boost capacity, from 35,000 policies in 1999 to 215,000 today. "We will now be building upon LifePRO through ease of data access and more efficient processing," Cornett says. --Maria Woehr