Grange Insurance receives E-Fusion Award for agent/broker management.

Grange Insurance of Columbus, Ohio, has been named an A.M. Best Co. E-Fusion Award recipient in the Agent/Broker Management category for its GrangeAgent.com, an independent insurance agency extranet portal to an integrated platform that's designed to enhance agent work flow and streamline business.

The portal was designed around the company's core philosophy: EODB, or Ease of Doing Business. "We talked to our three main user groups: customer service reps, producing agents, and agency principals and office managers to define how they would like to work with us," said Carol Drake, vice president of marketing. The result? A system that supports Grange AgentWare, enabling agents to electronically manage their book of business. Opt-in usage of the site has been 100%, and more than 92% of all personal lines new business and 94% of all policy changes are being entered through the new system.

As far as what the portal means for the company, "it's the way we do business," said Drake. Agents demand the company delivers high-end, easy functionality that's electronic, and "the system is ideal as agencies expand, and it helps make things easier for new [customer service representatives] as they learn," she said.

The system is currently in operation in 11 states, with its latest implementation in South Carolina.

The other finalists in the category include:

The Hartford Insurance Co., Hartford, Conn., launched Quote to Issue for its agents, aggregators, comparative raters and mass retailers to facilitate business by enabling greater growth and lower call-handling time. Agents are able to receive underwriting decisions without having to contact a call center. More than 95% of the company's agents use QTI for quoting and issuance.

MassMutual Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of MassMutual Financial Group of Springfield, Mass., created Web portal Life App Express to streamline the company's application process for its career agents and independent brokers. Life App Express is averaging about 3,560 unique producer and independent broker visits per month, and the company reported an initial 50% increase in new cases since its launch.

New York Life Insurance Co. launched its Web-based Agency Portal to provide one place where its agents and managers can operate their business, access information, receive communications and collaborate. The Manhattan-based company's 10,000 agents and 3,000 field and home office employees can access Agency Portal from any Internet connection.

Protective Life Insurance Co.'s Institutional Distribution Group of Cincinnati, and The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.'s Hartford Life Insurance Co. of Simsbury, Conn., collaborated on the launch of the Insurance Online Network. ION is a multi-carrier, Web-based insurance quoting and electronic application submission system designed to improve service and to help broker-dealers, banks and other distributors meet life insurance goals.

Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Company of Canada, Toronto, developed the WebBusiness Transactional Tool to afford brokers responsibility and control over the processing of personal lines new business. About 635 brokers nationwide are now using WebBusiness, comprising more than 95% of the company's existing policies.

Savings Bank Life Insurance Company of Massachusetts, in Woburn, Mass., launched SBLI's Intertask sales and marketing system to facilitate the company's marketing and direct sales efforts, and to enable growth and expansion into existing and new markets. Intertask provides pre-submission quality control of applications, real-time ordering of paramedical exams, increased lead generation, more effective client communication, data mining, and campaign management.

Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. developed PlanFinder, an online sales process that marries decision support and needs assessment tools with full-scale application processing technology. PlanFinder enables consumers to identify and purchase a personalized individual health plan from home, by focusing on finding health plans specifically aligned to an individual's health-care preferences and needs instead of using price only as the key selection criterion.

--Lori Chordas and

Bonnie Brewer Cavanaugh