A Special Section Sponsored by Alliance for Productive Technology, Inc.

SEMCI "RATES"

Varied agency operations require rating systems to be SEMCI-enabled

"Our initiatives with online quoting, along with our integration with APT's webSEMCI, offer specific opportunities to agents and carriers looking to provide insurance quotes on the Web."

By Frank Amoruso, President & CEO, Rating Services,
A Member of the AMS Holding Group

The connectivity of agents to carriers is critical to our industry. But everyone already knows that. What we as an industry must recognize is that agent-to-carrier connectivity happens not only between agency management and policy administration systems, but via other essential systems as well.

A rating system is one of those "other" essential systems. There are a significant number of agents still doing business without a management system as well as those with management systems who prefer to send the rating data to the carrier and download the policy data later. There are also agents using management systems that do not integrate with APT. SEMCI communication between the carrier's policy system and the agent's rating system is critical to address the needs of these varied agency operations. By incorporating SEMCI and integrating rating products with APT products, rating vendors fill this void in the agency workflow.

Rating Services, created in late 1998 as its own division of the AMS Holding Group, is committed to the success of SEMCI through a strategic initiative to integrate Rating Services products with APT products. We believe that SEMCI will help agents dramatically reduce their data entry costs allowing them to spend more time on their core competencies: selling and servicing insurance. As the first rating vendor to integrate with APT's SAM and webSEMCI products, we are excited to be leading the charge and expanding the frontier of SEMCI.

We also see dramatic opportunity with SEMCI on the Internet. Rating Services has provided online quoting capabilities to five insurance carriers and released a pilot comparative quoting service for agency Web sites in July. Our initiatives with online quoting, along with our integration with APT's webSEMCI, offer specific opportunities to agents and carriers looking to provide insurance quotes on the Web. As consumers or agents produce online quotes, the data is then uploaded to the carrier via webSEMCI. This becomes a seamless process for the consumer and reduces costs for both the agent and carrier. Our plan is to provide the entire insurance industry with online access to rating data, and the most efficient means to move that data between the different industry partners.

In today's competitive marketplace, customers demand greater efficiency and the ability to reduce their costs. As vendors, our responsibility is to work together and develop opportunities that provide added value to our customers, and improve the overall productivity of the insurance distribution system. We are excited to be partners with APT in the realization of this goal. *