ISO Makes Play into Policy Mgt.

Looking to round off its offerings to the P&C industry, ISO (Jersey City, NJ) has made what it calls "a significant equity investment" in Nashua, NH-based software and services firm AscendantOne, for purposes of delivering rating and policy management products incorporating ISO information. As part of the arrangement, ISO will also provide AscendantOne with sales and marketing support.

High Priority

ISO sealed the deal (terms of which were not released at press time) because it found the right partner to help meet industry demands, according to Chris Guidette, the firm's vice president of communications. "Insurers have been urging ISO to offer its own policy and rating solutions for some time," he says. "Because of that, the move to partner with the right technology firm became a very high priority."

The two firms will collaborate in integrating ISO's loss costs, manual rules and forms information into AscendantOne's RateFocus and PolicyFocus applications. "They're going to work very closely with us in expanding the product," says Paul Philp, AscendantOne's president and CEO. The ISO-powered RateFocus/PolicyFocus solution will be available for all ISO lines of insurance starting with the July launch of ISO's new Business Owners Program (BOP), enabling ISO to make a firm first step into rating and policy administration.

"Among the challenges carriers will face when they implement ISO's BOP is making changes not only to their rating systems, but also policy administration systems," according to Philp. "We can take their information and put a solution in the marketplace for those carriers that wish to adopt that rather rapidly."

ISO identified AscendantOne as having "far and away the best product, the best people and the best capabilities," Guidette says. But the deal was also driven by the fact that the vendor had a solution that differentiated it from competing systems, he adds. "It's easily adaptable to insurance companies' systems. It's a Web-based system that's extremely flexible. It's an XML system and there's just nothing like it out there," Guidette asserts.

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