SAFECO Outsources Agent Appointments to BISYS

Looking to reduce operating cost, Seattle-based SAFECO has effectively outsourced its agent appointment and termination processes to BISYS (New York).

SAFECO, previously a user of BISYS's AppointPAK system product, switched to appointpak.com, an Internet-based third-party application run by BISYS that replaces SAFECO's internal administrative tasks that were required to license insurance professionals. Appointpak.com will process the appointments, terminations and requests for letters of certification for SAFECO's 100,000 producers in a paperless environment.

"Our goals were to reduce paperwork, streamline workflow and automate manual processes," says Sharon Freel, business system analyst, SAFECO. The insurer had been using AppointPAK since 1992, but wanted to eliminate the back-office processing associated with the appointment process. "We required a single system with one point of data entry that could be accessed by both our Indianapolis and Seattle offices. We are now operational with appointpak.com, which accomplishes our goals and effectively processes all of our appointments and terminations," according to Freel.

Barbara Hales, executive vice president, BISYS' Licensing Solutions, says that with appointpak.com, SAFECO supplies BISYS with the agent's information and BISYS processes the appointment. "With apointpak.com, BISYS gets the data and we do all of the processing," Hales says. "This is a third-party arrangement, so SAFECO can eliminate the back-office operation associated with appointments and terminations."

BISYS processes and transmits the requests through its Producer Information Network (PIN) or mails them to the respective state department of insurance. Appointpak.com provides online access to the status of each appointment and termination, and exports processed transaction information to update SAFECO's internal agent database.

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio