Amica Adopts Agency Management Tech
By Mark E. Ruquet
What does a company do when it doesn’t want to lose customers but can’t provide all of the personal lines coverage its customer needs at a price he or she can afford?
At Amica Mutual Insurance Company, based in Lincoln, R.I., you set up Amica General Agency (AGA) to form relationships with other carriers to provide that coverage, said Kevin Cotter, assistant vice president for Amica, a direct writer of personal lines insurance throughout the country.
A writer of auto, home and life business, Amica several years ago felt it was losing business by opening up avenues to other insurers because of its conservative underwriting appetite. An Amica automobile policyholder, for instance, could not obtain insurance for their motorcycle and would have to go elsewhere.
The company decided to do something about this a few years ago and started AGA. “We decided we wanted to be the one-stop answer for our customer’s insurance needs,” said Mr. Cotter.
The business took off, producing thousands of policies. The problem was keeping track of all those policies, the majority of which were on paper, and making them available to service representatives and producers.
Mr. Cotter felt that the problem could be solved by Brea, Calif.-based XDimensional Technologies’ Nexsure agency management system.
Nexsure, Mr. Cotter felt, was the answer to link their management system with the other insurer relationships, and in turn, make all of a client’s insurance information policies accessible for service.
“It’s a traditional licensing of our product,” said Bob Juracka, president of XDimensional, explaining that the application will not involve customization of Nexsure to Amica’s system.
As the new kid on the block when it comes to agency management products, XDimensional wants to be “careful and wary” of customization, he said. In this application, Amica has chosen the same version of Nexsure that any independent agent would receive.
As a Web-based technology platform, Nexsure will not involve the acquisition and implementation of new software for Amica or the addition of new hardware, he noted. Instead, the Web platform will be a bridge between the carriers.
“We liked the platform,” said Mr. Cotter. “It’s forward looking, and that was something we sought for the long term, and it is something we could weave into other systems.”
The implementation of Nexsure with Amica is just beginning. Progressive will be the first carrier relationship Amica seeks to link through Nexsure, said Mr. Cotter, because of its own technology advancements and their reliability as a business partner.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, March 5, 2004. Copyright © 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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