Translating the vision.

Selective Insurance Group Inc.'s commitment to technology stems from a plan: It wants to be the easiest company with which agents can do business. "We develop our technology in concert with our agent strategy participants and our agent producer participants and work with them to figure out what direction we will go" said Richard Connell, executive vice president and chief information officer for Branchville, N.J.-based Selective.

Selective's mission, from a technology standpoint, is to drive the company's information technology plan from strategic and tactical business plans to provide and support business-driven applications and to run a reliable,efficient, secure IT infrastructure, Connell said.

The company calls the overall program a "hightech, high-touch" plan, integrating technology--high tech--into the underwriting and agency-management segments of the business--high touch, Connell said.

The strategy has four main points, including an emphasis on straight through processing, where information is entered once and goes straight through the system without having to be re-entered by another person. The agency enters the applicant information into the system, and if the application meets basic criteria, the policy goes straight through to printing and delivery without another person needed in file process.

The idea of a single-entry, multiple-carrier interface-called SEMCI by industry representatives--is becoming a sort of "Holy Grail" for companies concerned about costs and efficiency.

"Bringing people into the process costs money and introduces errors," Connell said.

Second, the overall system provides real-time access to accurate information for all of the company's constituencies, Connell said. The agencies can look at all their information through the Web portal and see the results online for their efforts in terms of policies issued and payments made to agents.

Third, the company has an integrated system, he said, noting it buys or builds systems specifically to be integrated, so that, for example, its human resources system is integrated with its payroll system, and the information flows from one part to the next.

Finally, it uses state-of-the-art technology platforms, Connell said. When the technology gets to be obsolete, expensive and unsupported, the company takes it out of use.

"It's hot leading-edge stuff, but we wait for it to be ready for prime time and at industrial strength and then go for it," Connell said."Then we build them so they do talk to each other."

Selective's management has made a commitment to technology,Connell said. We're spending about 25% of our budget on new systems, which is a healthy chunk," he said.

All of this pays off in case of doing business and that strengthens the relationships with agencies, Connell said. Field representatives come into the office and help in the overall design, then come in once a year to review technology projects, look at tire design and discuss work flows.

"Agencies are like streams of water," Connell said. "They will go the path of least resistance. If we have good products and good relationships and we're easy to do business with, then we're there as one of the premier carriers in that agency."

Selective is committed to the development of standard transactions to do business between agencies and carriers, Connell said."We support ACORD, because that activity helps the ease of doing business. This technology doesn't work unless you have standard languages, and if the agencies are all talking different languages to the different companies, then this won't work. The intent also is to get consumers to the point where they can compare policies from one carrier to another on the same basis, apples to apples."

The Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development is an association whose mission is to help the development and use of standards for the insurance and related financial-services industries. The intent of ACORD is to improve efficiency and expand market reach by reducing costs, duplication of work and ambiguous communication exchanges; improving accuracy; facilitating e-business; and supporting multiple distribution models.

Connell said he sees four technology trends ahead. One trend will be advances in hardware and software. As hardware gets to be smaller and cheaper and as software gets to be more sophisticated, computers will show up in different forms in more places, in equipment and daily devices.

The second trend will be the maturity of the Internet and how it will allow people to connect to one another worldwide, Connell said. Another trend will be standard rules for business over the Internet. The final trend will be the institution of wireless technology and the ability to do business transactions anywhere. With wireless technology, an agent will be able to give a customer a policy quote while sitting in the car, without going back to an office to make a computer connection, be added.

Selective is playing with each of these trends in different ways, Connell said."We are using the standardization of information input to make these new hardware and software tools work. We are using the Internet as a service tool for out agencies and trying to connect all out business connections across the Internet. For auto claims, for example, we have the glass company set up with a connection so when the claims information is sent through, it passes straight to the glass vendor, with no additional entry."

Although most of Selective's business is in commercial lines, the company offers personal insurance products for individuals and families, including automobile, homeowners, personal catastrophe liability and flood coverages.