Insight: A Sword Insurance Blog

Sword Insurance in the News

Posted by Mason Power - July 14th, 2010 at 06:07:42 pm

Doug Shillito of Insurance Newslink wrote a thoughtful piece about the formation of the insurance division including quotes and perspective not seen in other coverage. With Doug’s permission, you will find the article reprinted below.

Sword Insurance unfolds global strategy

It is four years since Insurance Newslink interviewed Heath Davies, then coo of French-owned Sword Group, now ceo. Sword had recently acquired long-term London Market software specialist Intech and Davies outlined his vision for the Sword Group to become predominantly software-orientated and a global player-and he planned further acquisitions in the insurance space.
Earlier this month, Sword Insurance was launched. It is a global co-ordination unit across Sword Intech, Sword Health, Sword Open Xposure, and the latest acquisition, Sword AgencyPort, purchased last November. Following Davies’s plan, Sword Insurance is also utilising horizontal Group solutions such as customer relationship offering, Sword Ciboodle, another acquisition, which has been sold to two companies in the UK insurance market.
Insurance Newslink met up with ceo of Sword Insurance, Steve Hauck, in London to obtain further background to Sword Group’s ambition to be a global software provider, particularly in insurance, which is targeted to produce a third of the Group’s revenues this year.
Significantly, Hauck was a co-founder of AgencyPort in the US ten years ago, and his co-founder, Eric Harnden, and other senior members of Sword AgencyPort, are forming the initial global team.
Key roles for Sword Insurance include global product development-the Research and Development budget has been significantly increased with onshoring facilities in Wales and offshoring in India. Strategic sales and marketing will ensure cross-fertilisation of products to the existing 110 insurance customer base across17 countries. Revenue from organic growth is planned to more than double in the next few years, and further acquisitions are likely to complete the global and across-market segment jigsaw. The Group has over 350 staff dedicated to insurance.
Hauck emphasizes the “single unified message” and the aim to achieve an “inventive mindset” across all offerings, with the focus on strong customer interaction-100% client references are a feature of the successful Sword AgencyPort business. He believes the future is component-based rather than “big bang” and the existing customer base is buying into other products across the Group-Sword AgencyPort is working with three major Sword Intech customers in the London Market, and opportunities for multi-channel front-end distribution abound, particularly as Sword Intech has real potential to expand in the US-and Continental Europe, as has Sword Health. ACORD involvement from both sides of the pond is also a plus point-the London Market is a global business with a complex, often lengthy, process chain, and there is an opening to offer streamlining and multi-lingual/currency solutions. Hauck added that Sword Ciboodle makes Sword AgencyPort richer.
Sword Intech has hidden its light under a bushel and a higher marketing profile will spotlight its speed of implementation, its impressive customer base, its readiness for Solvency II, and its wide market knowledge after 40 years of providing insurance software solutions. Sword AgencyPort management bring an entrepreneurial and customer relationship flair and will be the catalyst to implement the Heath Davies strategy-making the whole bigger than the sum of its parts.
There is much to do and Insurance Newslink will be keeping in touch as this potential global player emerges.

Announcing Sword Insurance

Posted by Mason Power - July 2nd, 2010 at 08:07:44 am

As noted at the time that AgencyPort was acquired in late 2009, the intention of the Sword Group was to pull together a strategic division focusing on the global insurance industry. This week we announce the management team, market vision and goals for our new division.

With 350 staff serving over one hundred clients in 17 countries with offshore delivery and services staff in Wales and India, the new Sword Insurance division just needed a strategic vision to combine the strengths of Sword Intech, Sword AgencyPort and Sword Ciboodle and a management team to execute on that vision for our customers.

Today we announced the new vision and management team led by Sword AgencyPort co-founders Steve Hauck and Eric Harnden and Sword AgencyPort’s Curt Stevenson. The three have worked together successfully already for ten years.

The market strategy that seemed sensible at the time of the acquisition of AgencyPort has been developed and market-tested with global clients and industry analysts like Novarica, Celent, Gartner and Forrester. We offer a unique combination of products from front-office distribution technology to back-office policy administration complemented with business intelligence tools. Our delivery teams (onshore and offshore) are dedicated to customer satisfaction.

An increased R&D budget funded by the parent company will ensure that the roadmaps of the individual product teams are achieved and also to drive an integration roadmap to offer the market unique combinations of policy administration and point of sale applications or an insurance CRM with transaction portals bundled together.

We have updated the sword-insurance.com website to have two versions: one for North America and one for Europe (which replaces the Sword Intech website). You can toggle back and forth at the top right of the site. This blog, once focused on all things AgencyPort has begun to discuss matters relevant to all markets Sword Insurance serves.

For us, the customer-centric value system is the highest priority – it has served Sword AgencyPort well for ten years (all of our clients act as references) and will drive our product development and delivery teams across all of Sword Insurance. We’ve already seen delivery and product integrated at client sites. Let us know how we can better serve you.

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.

Novarica covers Ciboodle

Posted by Mason Power - April 15th, 2010 at 12:04:24 pm

Leading insurance technology industry analysts Novarica have published its first Market Navigator report to help technology buyers evaluate CRM suppliers. Novarica’s report is for sale here.

Sword Ciboodle, our sister company, is prominently featured in the report. In the words of the venerable Matt Josefowicz of Novarica, “…Enhancements in customer service [are] a key differentiator…[and] modern solutions like Sword Ciboodle can be important elements of executing that strategy.”

Ciboodle have a press release (here) which summarizes the report and why it’s product was featured.

Bravo Ciboodle, that makes it favorable coverage by Novarica of all three Sword Group solutions for the insurance market (AgencyPort, Intech & now Ciboodle).

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.

2009: The Year in Review (Part 1 of 2)

Posted by Mason Power - December 23rd, 2009 at 08:12:05 am

Looking back on 2009, it’s been a year packed with highlights, none bigger than adding more clients to our roster, introducing innovative new products and closing out some significant implementations. Oh yeah, we also sold the business after 9 years.

This post hopefully comes before you’re tired of the retrospective “2009 year in review” specials on tv, and focuses on the achievements we’ve made for our clients and the fun we’ve had with them along the way. Happy Holidays to all.

New clients we added in 2009 include MiddleOak, LUBA, Fireman’s Fund, Lexington, The Hartford, Berkley FinSecure, Harleysville, Safety, Hortica, Western Reserve Group, CompSource and Chubb Specialty. We work for our clients every day and are honored to be chosen by these reputable firms.

In January, an existing client, General Casualty, won a prestigious award judged by analysts Celent. In naming the components of a model carrier based on effective use of technology, General Casualty’s use of AgencyPortal won for “Personal Lines Agency Point of Sale Enhancements”. We were also recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies and Boston Business Journal for its Pacesetter Award.

ACORD’s annual conference in May is our biggest industry event of the year and there were a series of highlights:

ACORD was the end of the Agent Insight Tour where we interviewed 66 independent agencies about using technology to conduct business with carriers. The team of folks on staff who pulled off this feat should be very proud, it was a strategy/R&D home run for us. The tour was also the official launch of this blog.

Penn National won the ACORD innovative implementation award for using the Interview module with AgencyConnect. Continental Western Group won another ACORD award for “Real Time Implementation & Download Implementations” (same link).

Have you seen our matrix of AgencyConnect support for comparative raters, agency management systems etc? Call us, we’ll be happy to show you how far you can reach using one product and one knowledgeable team.

Commerce won INN’s VIP award honorable mention published around the ACORD conference for implementing our AgencyPortal and AgencyConnect for their homeowners’ book.

ACORD was also the official release of AgencyPortal 4.0 which, among other terrific product enhancements, delivered version 1 of our ToolKit. Now clients can build and maintain their web portals easily and without hard-coding. The ToolKit demonstrates our commitment to staying ahead of the competition in delivering multi-channel product distribution solutions to P&C carriers.

Later in the week at ACORD we had a client outing to a nearby nightclub where we rubbed shoulders with Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic. Interesting as this was, our clients seemed to talk more about the trip back that night and the exposure they got to our partner Edgewater.

Business as Usual

Posted by Mason Power - November 30th, 2009 at 12:11:15 pm

After announcing the good news about AgencyPort becoming Sword AgencyPort, a palpable calm has taken over.

Perhaps it’s the effect of the Thanksgiving break, but in most regards we are already back to business as usual with clients talking about project milestones, prospective clients talking about what can be licensed before year-end, and Sword AgencyPort staff planning for our next R&D strategy session and talking about the weekend’s NFL results. As a Giants fan, the latter is not my favorite subject of the day.

This quick return to normalcy is to be expected based on the structure of the acquisition where Sword AgencyPort runs as a standalone business under the umbrella of the Sword Group. The only difference for management is getting to know the additional resources now available to us. To that end, we are spending time with the Sword Intech folks in New York this week to better understand their products and how we can help solve more problems together for carriers in the specialty and E&S markets. The following week we’ll be focusing on Sword Ciboodle as clients have asked for plans to present an integrated multi-channel portal plus CRM.

Why now? Why Sword?

Posted by Mason Power - November 20th, 2009 at 10:11:34 am

We like what we do at AgencyPort and clients say it shows in our work. Therefore client anxiety about any M&A activity around AgencyPort was the hope that clients could keep us doing what we do in the way that we do it.

On the other hand, clients kept asking us for more products and we wanted to provide new solutions for them. We had a choice of raising capital to build these new solutions or finding the right partner or parent company. Internally at AgencyPort we wanted to balance the desire to offer these new products with the hope that we could maintain the fraternal (and sometimes fraternity) atmosphere that has been built on the backs of dedicated staff over 9 years.

Could we have our cake and eat it too? Could clients get the same AgencyPort and also realize new product offerings and a global presence while at the same time could our team continue to love what they do? The team decided that now was the right time and Sword was the right partner to grow in the long term. Under the deal structure, we maintain the AgencyPort business as it is with its product roadmap intact, its project teams still together, and our fearless leaders in Steve & Eric at the helm.

We spent the better part of yesterday calling all of our clients to let them know about the deal, and clients get it. Thank you to our clients.

An Exciting New Day

Posted by Steve Hauck - November 19th, 2009 at 04:11:22 pm

Today we proudly announce the acquisition of our Company by the Sword Group (www.sword-group.com; NYSE Euronext: SWP). We are excited about this combination and confident it marks an important step in the evolution of AgencyPort as a strategic software provider and partner to you, our customer. Sword will bring AgencyPort a significant presence in the London/Lloyds insurance market and industry leading products in policy administration and process-centric customer service (CRM) software. Our products are highly complementary and we share a common vision and strategy for the global insurance market. With operations in 37 countries, and over 1,700 people worldwide, Sword gives us the products, resources and experience to help bolster our offerings in the U.S. and scale our business into Europe and beyond.

Our goal has always been – and remains today – to develop solutions that impact our customer’s business. After nine years focusing on automating distribution, this is an important step toward broadening our horizon, our capabilities and solution set. By combining with Sword we gain a suite of proven products and the resources needed to help us scale on a global level such as 24×7 support services, hosting facilities, R&D centers, multi-national software expertise, offshore development and a global delivery infrastructure. Sword also brings over 60 customers in insurance, a leading policy administration product suite (Sword Intech) and a market leading BPM based CRM solution (Sword Ciboodle). All of these add up to more tools to help deliver solutions for our customers.

We are thrilled to find a partner that values our people, our culture, and innovative spirit – the things that make AgencyPort who we are. Going forward these things won’t change. AgencyPort management will remain intact and business will operate the way it always has. With Sword, we look forward to the delivering the combined synergy and value – that we believe – ranks second to none in the insurance technology industry.

We sincerely want to take this opportunity to thank each and every customer and partner for your business, support and loyalty as we enter this new chapter in AgencyPort history.

Sincerely,

Everyone at AgencyPort!