ePolicy Acquisition Enhances Insurity’s Range
Hartford-based insurance technology vendor Insurity has added Java-based policy administration solutions to its menu with parent company ChoicePoint's (Alpharetta, Ga.) acquisition of ePolicy Solutions.
ChoicePoint announced on July 13 that it had "acquired certain assets" of the Torrance, Calif.-based P&C industry software vendor, including the RightRisk product line, and that ePolicy's products would be offered through ChoicePoint's Insurance Decisions suite of business improvement products and services, marketed through Insurity.
Insurity's vice president and general manager, Tony Reisz, characterized the acquisition as complementing the vendor's existing products, which are built on Microsoft's (Redmond, Wash.) .NET development platform. "In addition to strengthening our market reach, it will help further our ability to address the growing needs of customers seeking customizable, tools-based solutions and 'best-in-class' approaches," Reisz commented.
That ChoicePoint should acquire another select insurance software vendor is not surprising, according to Craig Weber, a San Antonio, Texas-based analyst with Celent, given that Celent had predicted as much. What is interesting, in Weber's opinion, is that the vendor should pick up another policy administration provider in the commercial lines space. "They seem to be playing up the tool-based aspects of ePolicy, which is 100 percent Java," he says. "They can pretty much meet any need in the commercial lines space now."
As a newer, smaller company, ePolicy is likely to benefit from the implementation and support resources afforded by its being in the ChoicePoint/Insurity fold - a benefit that will redound to ePolicy's customers as well. "If I were an ePolicy customer I would be happy with the sale because it gives [the vendor] a level of financial stability that perhaps it didn't have."
The acquisition is good news for the industry as well, according to Weber, because it represents not the departure of a worthwhile vendor from the market but rather the strengthening of one. "I don't think it lessens choice in the commercial lines policy admin space, and that's what I would worry about, seeing a vendor bought," he says. "It appears as if [ChoicePoint/Insurity] is buying an asset to run it; this is not two products consolidating, at least not at the outset."
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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
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