Insurity as the "Madonna" of Insurance Systems

The story heard during a conversation at the annual IASA Show at the Convention Center in San Diego is that an executive at Insurity was trying to explain to a young female relative where the company stood in its market trajectory, now that it had left LexisNexis. The executive explained that the company was moving forward aggressively with investments to its systems, but it retained the value of its long-standing implementations and customer relationships — an established performer with roots in an earlier era, dedicated to bringing a contemporary, relevant product to the market. "Oh, so you're like Madonna," said the young woman.

Whether Madonna is a welcome simile for the vendor may be a matter of taste, but Insurity is engaged in making an impact analogous to the famous singer. It's not exactly making a comeback, because it's never really gone away, but it is refocusing its energies to meet current appetite for innovative products, now that it is backed by Genstar Capital and no longer submerged within a much larger company within a very different technology area.

At IASA, Insurity has made two announcements to express how it has refocused in the last several months: the vendor has launched a new forms authoring tool that expands its App Factory Configurator for Policy Decisions; and it has announced the replatforming of Policy Decisions Personal lines system to the .NET platform.

Delivered in the Cloud and immediately available for new Insurity proprietary lines implementations, the Forms Authoring Tool is already being used in a pilot environment at Insurity's client, SPARTA Insurance Company (Hartford), according to a vendor statement. The new tool will be made available this year for all Insurity Policy Decisionsclients.

[For more on Insurity's post-LexisNexis phase see The Return of Insurity: Analysts React.]

"While we are still fairly early in our use of the Forms Authoring Tool, we have been impressed with the forms creation and management capabilities, and especially the tool's ease-of-use," comments Enrico Ferrante, senior VP, operations, SPARTA. "Like many insurers, SPARTA Insurance Company is looking to technology to continue to enhance our operation and make us more efficient as well as self-sufficient. We are especially pleased when a vendor partner like Insurity recognizes the value of putting the control in our hands to enable us to manage our own environment."

The vendor says that the Forms Authoring Tool gives Policy Decisions users additional forms capabilities as well as the opportunity to self-manage their forms environment. Based on Microsoft Word, insurers can quickly become proficient with the Forms Authoring Tool without the need for extensive training or support, Insurity claims.

With the replatforming of its personal lines policy application, Insurity has met customer demand to offer a common platform for all P&C lines of business – commercial, personal, and specialty lines, noted CEO Jeffrey Glazer, in a conversation during the opening hours of the IASA show.

"With all of our solutions now supported on a common .NET platform, our clients are better able to take full advantage of all we have to offer and leverage capabilities across all Insurity core processing systems," Glazer says. "The replatforming of Policy Decisions Personal was a priority for us and a direct response to client and industry feedback. We will continue to enhance our product suite and the underlying technology, but we will always take the time to do our due diligence and invest the time and effort to get it right. It's this approach that has made us successful and allows us to boast a 100 percent success rate and a 25-year history of helping insurers modernize core processes."

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