Star Solutions Tech Gives ITS Edge

Leveraging the financial clout of its parent company ePolicy, Insurance Technology Solutions (ITS, Torrance, CA) has acquired Star Solutions' Policy Rate and Issue system for property and casualty companies and their agents, along with other assets. The acquisition will flesh out ITS's Web-based, automated insurance distribution system offering, RQBI Solution, which rates, quotes, binds and issues online in real time.

Having worked on the technology for 10 years, "Star was the only company that had succeeded in automating ACORD-based commercial lines in a desktop version," says Lou Kwiker, president and CEO, ITS. "It broadens our offering to that whole group of carriers that deals with ACORD-based commercial lines. We will, in effect, take that technology and Web-enable it so that we can totally automate the process in a straight-through processing environment."

ITS got acquainted with Star through one of its clients, whose MGAs were using the desktop Policy Rate and Issue system. "About 40 MGAs were using it already, and we saw that the technology really worked," Kwiker says. "It was a much faster and less expensive way to create Web-enablement of the full book of business for that carrier. We're now in the process of integrating that technology into our Web platform."

Describing Star as a small company that had been suffering "all the problems of a lack of scale," Kwiker says ITS made it an offer it couldn't refuse. "I think, also, that together we made a much more attractive offering than one company by itself, and we offered Star financial stability to the equation."

Kwiker asserts that the Star technology adds unique capability to ITS's offering, which he describes as enabling insurance carriers to get a private-label Web site to market faster, without the time and expense of developing home-grown solutions: "We know of no competitors who have this type of technology."

The Star technology's automation of ACORD-based commercial lines property and casualty "gives us a significant opportunity to expand our business into that category," Kwiker says. "We think it's an ideal opportunity for us. If we combine our existing Web and front-end expertise with the Star platform expertise, in this mid-size commercial technology, I think we've got a blockbuster product."

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