HARFORD MUTUAL USES CGI'S RATABASE TO PUT ONLINE RATING IN THE HANDS OF HAPPY AGENTS

Working with CGI to implement Ratabase allowed us to achieve the best possible results within our aggressive timeframes to incorporate rating in our agency portal. Our agents are extremely satisfied with the system we implemented and have increased the new business being sent to Harford Mutual. Internally, we have increased our speed to market, reached our SOA technology goals for rating, and can now move the rating maintenance from IT to the business experts allowing us more time for strategic IT initiatives.

Stephen Fabian, Assistant Vice President, IT

Founded over 150 years ago in Harford County, Maryland, The Harford Mutual Insurance Company, provides property and casualty insurance products and services to a regional market of eight states. Their driving principle is to strive for profitable growth through a commitment to individualized customer service and by providing the independent agent with a stable market for quality insurance products. Harford Mutual had traditionally been an organization that preferred to develop its applications in-house rather than to purchase vendor solutions, but when it came time to quickly create an online rating and submission tool for their agents, as well as incorporate new technologies such as .Net and SOA, the firm decided to look in the marketplace for options.

The Challenge
Harford Mutual was challenged to provide its agency base with an online rating and policy submission system. Harford Mutual wanted to create a system that would improve their agent relationships as well as simplify the process of doing business. This equated to the need to move their applications to the Internet for their agents. Since taking on this initiative Harford Mutual wanted to be able to consolidate and have one common rating engine for its policy administration and their online systems. Their systems to date offered no web-based products for rating. The existing rating engines were developed in house and consisted of database tables requiring multiple calls, had embedded business rules, and needed to be maintained by IT staff. This architecture would have been difficult to leverage into the browser-based world.

Harford Mutual had a number of requirements heading to the marketplace for a solution. They wanted best of breed, interoperable components that would work with their existing policy administration system, as well as their online web agent system. They also needed a rating engine to meet their technology goals, including .Net, SOA, and XML. Being an IT driven initiative, they found that CGI's Ratabase provided the best solution for not only their SOA environment, but it also fit nicely into their .Net strategy. Ratabase also offered them the ability to achieve their business goals to move new products to market faster at a lesser cost, and to simplify maintenance tasks. Also, they wanted to position themselves with the ability to migrate maintenance from IT to the business and provide a forecasting tool in the future.

The Strategy
Given their technology and business goals, they decide the best approach would be to combine best of breed components with their existing policy system to create the desired resulting system. Their analysis of the market led them to the Ratabase rating solution. CGI worked in partnership with Harford Mutual to design a POC to demonstrate how a Ratabase solution would accomplish their goals. Upon selecting Ratabase and CGI, Harford Mutual put together a rollout strategy to meet their objectives. Their approach was to convert the rating for the policy administration system first, line by line, followed closely with rolling out the agency online system. Following a structured approach, requirements were developed for each line of business and then Harford Mutual engaged with CGI's Ratabase consulting practice to design the database. Harford Mutual was aggressive in their approach as they chose a more difficult line, Workers Compensation, to begin the project. Working with CGI, but taking on much of the development work themselves, Harford Mutual quickly rolled out the first line of business. Achieving success with this line and learning a great deal along the way, Harford Mutual then took on the conversion of Business Owners and Commercial Auto themselves. With each line, the conversion process proved to be faster and required fewer resources to achieve.

From a technical perspective, their policy administration system was not accustomed to an XML structure. But with a methodical approach, Harford Mutual was able to develop a web proxy using SOAP calls from its policy administration system that allowed them to pass data back and forth from Ratabase. The web proxy allowed the passing of information from Ratabase in a format that was known to their administration system, while using XML to return the same output to both the administration system and the web online application system. The single rating service is used for rating on both systems where different input formats are received and one Ratabase XML result delivered.

The Technology

• Microsoft, VB6, SQL Server, ASP.Net
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) was goal
• Migration to XML, .Net
• SOAP, web proxy

The Results
In less than one year, Harford Mutual has converted all internal rating systems and offer online access to their agents for the targeted three lines of business: Workers Compensation, Business Owners Policy, and Commercial Auto. Harford Mutual is now enjoying the success of their online system, RapidWrite, which is utilized by their agents. Within six months of opening RapidWrite to all agents, a large percentage of applications are received online and the turnaround time for a policy is now measured in hours rather than days. The simplicity of the system and the quick turnaround time has agents placing more business with Harford Mutual than ever before.

Beyond winning more new business, Harford Mutual was able to succeed in its technological goals that were set forth at the onset of the project. Ratabase provided them a SOA solution that complimented their .Net direction, provided a single reliable rating engine to both their administration and online systems while reducing the maintenance effort. It has also paved the way for future initiatives of having the business manage all rating, adding new lines of business quickly, and allowing for more accurate forecasting.

For more information:
David Squibb, Vice President
978-946-3343