Insight: A Sword Insurance Blog

A Mobile Demo Gone Awry

Posted by Michael Albert - June 1st, 2010 at 10:06:42 am

For this years ACORD we prepared a short video to showcase some of the work we’re doing in the mobile space. In this short piece, Swamy begins to take us through the demonstration, when things take an unexpected turn…

ACORD 2010 By the Numbers

Posted by Mason Power - May 27th, 2010 at 10:05:14 am

180 – The 180-degree view of the Las Vegas strip from the penthouse we rented for our client cocktail party at ACORD was amazing. See our COO Curt Stevenson on the balcony.

6.5 – The number of miles Ellen Carney of Forrester said she walked in a day at ACORD (she had a pedometer)

5 – The number of Sword AgencyPort clients receiving ACORD awards for solutions including our software (Aon Benfield, MEMIC, The Hartford, Harleysville, Concord Group, and The Hanover)

4 – We demonstrated four types of solutions at our booth this week from distribution by Sword AgencyPort, policy administration by Sword Intech, Insurance CRM by Sword Ciboodle and Sword’s overall business intelligence tools

3 – We are proud to have won three ACORD Awards for leading the ACORD standards forward and for implementations with clients (Aon Benfield and Concord Group)

3- The top requests regarding upload by Agents at the AUGIE meeting were more carriers handling upload, single sign-on, and for the solution we call Interview

2- Novarica surveyed CIOs and worked with Tech Decisions to launch new awards called RAVE and we won for Best Portal and were honorable mention for agency connectivity

1- Congrats to our Dennis Fosberg for scoring his first eagle in golf. Dennis is pictured with Joe Feo of Selective.

Updates from ACORD 2010

Posted by Mason Power - May 23rd, 2010 at 11:05:48 pm

First, the flight from New York went right over the Grand Canyon. Pretty amazing. For the record, Fos thinks it’s Bryce Canyon, I’m not sure. Perhaps  a reader can identify it in the comments.

Second, we had some enjoyable client golf in the 55 degree, blistery cold desert – no joke it’s late May and our client said it was warmer in London than Las Vegas.

Third, Novarica published its latest profiles of the policy administration solutions in the market today, with 50 listed in the P&C report, including Sword Intech. For a copy of the report go to Novarica’s site ($$). It’s popular because it’s flexible enough to handle the many specific client requests we’re seeing but also because its tool based configuration makes it client-ready quickly. Stop by our booth at ACORD tomorrow for a demo.

The New Website

Posted by Mason Power - May 20th, 2010 at 01:05:22 am

When the Sword Group acquired AgencyPort in November 2009 (announced in the press and on this blog), the story centered around enhancing what AgencyPort had to offer in insurance technology solutions and how AgencyPort could expand into new global markets.

Today we announce our new web site which describes how AgencyPort and other Sword solutions fit together to offer the insurance industry a unique combination of products that can be bought independently as best of breed components or purchased together as a bundled package.

Each of our solutions helps our clients grow their market share, expand into new markets, and improve their producer and policyholder satisfaction. While we offer products that enable a better customer experience throughout more of a customer lifecycle from sales to policy servicing and client support, we are still known for being quick to market with solutions that deliver immediate business value.

In a few months’ time since joining Sword, we have come together with the teams at Sword Intech (provider of the most flexible single system for policy administration, claims and billing used by over 60 P&C carriers in the UK, US, Bermuda, Europe and elsewhere) and Sword Ciboodle (with whom we are building on their leading platform for service center CRM applications and workflow and developing a CRM for insurance) to define this new combination of distribution, policy administration, CRM and business intelligence tools (have you seen our book analytics and risk aggregation service?).

While we are still laser-focused on the U.S. market, we have also begun to leverage what Sword can offer in taking AgencyPort solutions to new markets. I write today from London where we now have Sword AgencyPort staff working full-time on solutions for the Lloyd’s, London and European markets.

We have taken our new and enhanced story on the road to clients, had an independent third party survey our clients and spoken at length with our trusted partners at Novarica, Celent, Forrester and Gartner. Thank you for the help, and from your insight we have enhanced our collective product roadmaps and built demonstration systems combining our products.

We chose to release this new website on the eve of the annual ACORD Forum in Las Vegas because we are ready to show you our products and how they fit together. Please stop by our booth at ACORD (booth #341) and see the new set of solutions from AgencyPort such as a working portal on a mobile device and let us introduce you to the new insurance division at Sword.

A Service Bridge to Nowhere?

Posted by Mason Power - May 11th, 2010 at 08:05:58 am

In a recent Insurance & Technology piece, Anthony O’Donnell writes how carriers looking to have modern agent-facing technology don’t have to gut their architecture and rebuild at massive cost in time and money, a good topic and a solid post.

We’re seeing the same thing Anthony reports: AgencyPortal is being used to isolate the producer channel from back end disruption, while simultaneously allowing a carrier to differentiate on user experience by employing a best of breed web portal.

However, we would like to point out to our prospective clients that while a menu of services to call sounds nice, unless you’re using ACORD standards as the basis for these calls, your project will be a series one-off integrations of which you’ll eventually need to dispose and re-write as systems change.

Carriers who have gone with the best-of-breed approach are winning these days and those that use the ACORD data model (like us!) for interfacing with other systems position themselves for long term interoperability and avoid vendor lock in. Even tactical investments they make today in the front and back ends can be leveraged going forward as component systems change because of their use of the ACORD standard.

We have ten years experience and more than 5 times the number of clients that our next independent portal competitors have combined. We wouldn’t be where we are without enabling carriers to shield their producers and policyholders from an evolving back-end.

Agency Bulk Export & You

Posted by Mason Power - April 26th, 2010 at 10:04:25 am

To clarify the systems landscape for bulk transfer from agencies to carriers and where our BookSmart product fits here’s a breakdown by agency management system vendor:

Vertafore

Agencies using most versions of most Vertafore agency management systems can create a batch file of the multiple policies in a particular book of business.

The format can be either AL3 with an ACORD XML wrapper or ACORD XML.

The bulk export is then sent to a carrier and carriers with Vertafore’s Transit Server product have the book of business posted to AgencyPort’s Booksmart.

BookSmart breaks down the bulk file to validate and correct the policy data, transform and normalize it for downstream rating and core processing systems, and enable ad hoc user-generated reporting to determine the suitability of the book of business.

Sifting through thousands of records to find the desirable policies previously was inefficient and ineffective. Seven insurance carriers have now demonstrated that using BookSmart saves huge amounts of time and money and greatly enhances the quality of book analysis.

Among our seven installations to date, this bulk export method has proven to be the best method for book rolling.

Should your agents not be able to export in bulk from Vertafore they can create AL3 files for each policy and send them via TransactNow and on to BookSmart, but this requires the agent to pull each and every policy, a less than happy user experience for them.

Applied Systems

While Agents can pull individual policies and upload them via Transformation Station to BookSmart (we have a customer who is finding success here), bulk export as described above is not available and is not on the foreseeable Applied roadmap (due to lack of agent demand). However, we understand from some carriers that Applied covertly supports a method where agents can export in Excel after generating a custom report out of Applied. Talk to us about how we can help carriers process these excel sheets on the other end.

Other agency management systems

None have provided our customers with specifications for their bulk export capabilities. We’re live with single policy upload from many comparative raters and we’re working on Hawksoft and Appulate. If you work at these or at an agency management system vendor, we’d love to hear from you if you can support bulk export.

In general , for any agency system vendor that can export ACORD standard formats – AL3 or XML – BookSmart can pull policies in one by one in through the browser, or in bulk by uploading a zip file. So really, no matter the originating system, as long as you can get the data in ACORD format, you can get it into BookSmart without custom integration work or transport middleware.

170 People talking Insurance Technology

Posted by Mason Power - February 4th, 2010 at 12:02:40 pm

AUGIE is the ACORD-User Group Information Exchange (from the website: a forum for ACORD, agents, brokers, insurers, solution providers, and associations to gather information, share ideas and actively shape the future of the insurance industry). AUGIE is holding a regional meeting today.

There is a big crowd here in Tampa to discuss what agents and carriers want from each other (real-time quoting and download). I’ll be tweeting about it for interested parties.

“Once You Go Agile, You Never Go Back”

Posted by Mason Power - January 25th, 2010 at 05:01:32 pm

Or so says a fan on the official Agile Manifesto web site (every revolution, even those in project management, needs a good manifesto). (Find good background on the methodology and its manifesto here).

Listening today to a webinar by Camilion about product configuration being a key driver in staying current in today’s market, we picked up on a side comment made by Novarica’s Martina Conlon who was also speaking on the webinar.

Martina said Novarica has seen an increase in the adoption of the agile methodology by carriers, saying “it proves viability through successes early in the process”. AgencyPort uses the agile method and adds a hefty dose of method tailoring in order to suit the project methodology to the needs of the particular client, including the internal methodology adopted by that client or any third party integrators they might hire.

Because of the rapid deployment capabilities of the AgencyPort framework, the agile methodology suits us well. Since many client projects involve changes to policy administration and other core processing systems (i.e. big projects where production environment milestones can be years out), our clients’ master project plan usually calls for AgencyPort deliverables to front-end the plan, thereby driving business ROI early in the process. Using an iterative approach, AgencyPort and the carrier can prioritize these high value business drivers that will get you to production quickly.

While every RFP we see asks about our methodology (e.g. agile versus waterfall), the success of our project delivery is due to the ideals we hold to be all-important (perhaps we need to write the “AgencyPort delivery manifesto”?).

These ideals include honesty (you get the good, the bad and the ugly – we believe this openness instills trust among all parties to a project and this trust drives everyone to a better result); keeping teams intact; rotating the assignments of delivery staff so they are proficient in several areas; having a team with deep domain knowledge (we know ACORD, real-time rating, upload from agency management systems, what makes portals beloved by agents, integrations, comparative raters, etc.); and importantly, we provide a team of interesting and fun people (have you seen them karaoke yet??).

We won a significant new client in December and our project methodology played a big role in their decision-making. Thanks to Martina for confirming what we have seen: an uptick in client demand for our chosen delivery methodology. Have we mentioned that all of our clients will act as a reference??

The new ACORD Framework: What does it mean to you?

Posted by Mason Power - January 6th, 2010 at 06:01:26 pm

In the history of ACORD, first came the forms (now some eForms), then the data exchange standards (AL3 and XML), and now the ACORD Framework.

We’ve all been to ACORD conferences or sat in on their calls and heard about the framework which is really a collection of models (e.g. information model, data model, capability model), and I listened to Greg Maciag tell me about this in London in 2007 and had no idea what it meant, so for me to get a proper orientation and to put this new direction into perspective, it took Martina Conlon to write a report. New to Novarica, it’s a great start for Martina and a good read – find the abstract here with links to pay/download the full report.

As ACORD tried to keep up with the evolving XML standards, it became tough to communicate the complicated data relationships such as hierarchy among clients, carriers and intermediaries or how a location or sub-location tag could be found in many places and this led to confusion among those using the standards. Years ago, French firm Prima Solutions donated an object model to ACORD so that ACORD could better maintain their XML and other assets, and to contribute it as the foundation for a standard information model offering. The object model was found to be so helpful that ACORD decided it would benefit the market to publish it to all ACORD members, and the framework project was hatched. Recently IBM have donated further models to the cause (its IAA had been a rival set of standards) and ACORD will be publishing the first version of some models soon.

The Framework is not meant to replace the forms or the XML, instead its purpose according to Novarica is to help the insurance industry with a common definition of relationships between business objects giving the industry a head-start in designing new systems. Martina points out that there is no impact on the XML except that ACORD will be better able to keep it current. There will be no certification for the framework, it’s not a question of compatibility, it’s more of a set of standard resources that ACORD will promulgate in the hopes that they replace the proprietary product data models and object models resident in the marketplace today.

We architected our products on top of the ACORD standards and we support ACORD in this initiative (we might even have some models to donate ourselves). We are a good fit today for any carrier wishing to adopt the framework. Thank you to Novarica for helping us get up to speed – although any of us could conduct some primary research on ACORD’s site where they have plenty about the framework.

Update: Due to my poor research I incorrectly identified Prima Solutions as being Italian whereas they are French. Excusez moi.

2009: The Year in Review (Part 2 of 2)

Posted by Mason Power - December 24th, 2009 at 09:12:48 am

Continuing the previous post, we wanted to highlight some achievements and fun times we’ve had with clients, these from the latter half of the year:

First, we saw a client sign up for software only and rely entirely on their own staff to implement AgencyPortal. With only standard training and 40 hours of “kickstart” services, this project validated the notion that using the ToolKit could empower clients to decide on using our staff, a third party system integrator or their own staff for part or all of the implementation. On the topic of training, we conducted 5 training classes educating over 20 developers who work for clients and partners. Clients have been demanding this form of empowerment and choice and market feedback places us on the bleeding edge in delivering on the toolkit approach.

This summer, in an effort to impress potential acquiring companies, Steve and Eric beefed up the experience level of the team. One of them, with 35 years in insurance technology, still loves to go out with clients. We are glad to have welcomed Bob Dolan to the team in 2009 and enjoyed his visionary leadership, shown here at a company off-site near our Portsmouth, NH office.

This summer, Hiscox was the first to go live with our CoverIQ solution to normalize inbound premium and exposure data from coverholders to give Hiscox an edge in modeling North American property faster and with cleaner data and by offering its coverholders a better experience in managing bordereau reporting.

Gary Brach, CEO, upon returning in late September from Jackson Hole in time to address the opening session of the User Conference only to waste everyone’s time with a 25-minute description of how elks mate. Getting in deep about the rut and how males lock horns in order to woo the right female, Gary related this mating ritual to the insurance technology space, asking why all vendors couldn’t all just get along. This speech inspires graphic designers in the audience to adapt a famous image of hope to the Gary Elk story (or “GELK” as it has become known).

Before Gary enlightened the audience, AgencyPort management premiered the “Castoff Video” where Curt Stevenson comes the rescue of Gary, Eric & Steve who were lost at sea. See the team, thinking they were gone forever, discuss their regrets and hopes for the insurance technology industry.

This year’s User Conference featured our clients leading most of the sessions, a change that was well-received. To show our appreciation of General Casualty’s Todd Chesbro for volunteering to lead one of the most popular sessions, we let Todd clean up that night’s after-party. Thanks Todd!

We were lucky to have WR Berkley lead conference sessions (and some rousing Bon Jovi karaoke later) and Hartford leading a session about implementing distribution technology in a large enterprise (and dancing lessons that night).

We’re proud to have helped Kemper achieve a Top 10 ranking in INN’s recently-published list of the Top 10 innovations in the use of insurance technology (our BookSmart) for reducing the costs of book rolling by 25%.

This fall we achieved the Gold Ranking for Novarica ACE Rankings for both AgencyPortal (ranking here) and AgencyConnect (ranking here), which are based on client feedback and validate the impact our technology has on driving efficient trading for our clients.

After 9 years of building a business from scratch to having implemented 70+ projects across 53 clients (all of whom still stay with us, buy our other products, come to our conferences and act as references) and building a team of colleagues you’d love to work with, AgencyPort proudly sold itself and the team stays intact as part of the Sword Group.

At our year-end holiday party, four members of the team celebrated their 5-year anniversary with the company, all four are great at their jobs, but also have personal hobbies and interests. In typical AgencyPort fashion, we celebrated these personal interests with the attached magazine covers (were they expecting a gold watch instead?). Marcia Berner was so grateful for her gift that she decided to leave the company. We wish her the best in her new job. Coincidentally to the investigative journalists who published her magazine cover, she’s joining ACORD and yet she denies the allegations implied in her magazine cover…

Among the many projects with a successful conclusion this year (e.g. Tower Insurance went live for workers comp on our newest product, ProgramIQ), we completed a four-year project for ACIC to transform point of sale for Homeowners and Personal Auto.

Rounding out a strong year for Steve Hauck, where Steve was tapped by Sword to lead all of Sword’s insurance activities in the Americas, was his getting kicked out of his own New York office Christmas party by a bouncer.