Western & Southern Financial receives award in underwriting and pricing.

When Western & Southern Financial Group wanted to speed up its lift underwriting, it partnered with NaviSys to develop a J2EE-based system, iNB, that it says bas transformed its business. "This was a way to leverage the current technologies of the Internet and point-of-service computers and imaging systems in the home office that resulted in iNB," said Bryan Dunn, president of Western & Southern Agency Group.

iNB bas been recognized as a recipient of the E-Fusion Award in the Underwriting and Pricing category.

The system has improved the Cincinnati-based financial group's producer/customer service, underwriting results, operating efficiency and revenue, iNB enables a paperless process and automation of routine underwriting decisions, resulting in a jet-issue rate of 25% of issued policies. It also has copowered the group to process more business without adding more staff resources. Internal system users include underwriters, call center personnel, processors/back office staff, and licensing and marketing personnel.

"Overall, consistency in underwriting has been key? said Lisa Fangman, assistant vice president of new business. Eighty-four percent of cases now are being issued as quoted at point of service, she said, and the system is "gaining confidence from agents to give an accurate quote upfront and issue as applied in most cases."

The other finalists in this category were:

Companion Property & Casualty Group, Columbia, S.C., has streamlined its application and underwriting processes with the creation of Once & Done Underwriting, a program built on Microsoft's Visio platform. The system applies underwriting rules to determine overall eligibility, additional data-entry requirements, supplemental forms that may be needed, and eligibility for standard or preferred rates and levels of coverage. It then accepts, declines or refers the application to underwriting.

Insurance rate-making is both a science and an art, and it's becoming more complicated. Now General Management Systems Inc. is trying to make it easier by means of eRateMaker, a computer model that tan benefit both insurance executives and regulators. The model's analytic automation is the first in a line of tools for all personal lines of insurance and some commercial lines. The model allows regulators to capture a carrier's underwriting experience and risk classes, processes such data in pre-approved algorithms, and contains tools for sensitivity ("what-if") analyses that allow regulators and executives to test the impact that rate-making assumptions have on indicated rate levels.

Jersey City, N.J.-based Insurance Services Office bas developed Location, a broad-based geographic information system for the insurance industry. Clients who access Location online via ISO Passport tan access nearly a dozen services and have all the insurance and geographic-risk information within seconds, including natural hazards and public-protection systems. Insurers that wrote more than two-thirds of property insurance in the United States have used Location to assess their risks.

NavRisk is an end-to-end policy administration and underwriting application for the alternative risk market, including public risk pools, risk-retention groups, captives and other self-insured entities. The product, developed by Sacramento, Calif.-based Unify Corp., automates labor-intensive processes such as renewals, addition of new members, and communications between underwriters, administrators and brokers. It also rates applications, calculates, quotes, invoices and provides policy certificates, all the while creating an audit trail.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, demonstrated the insurance industry's vulnerability to concentrated losses in urban areas over multiple lines of business. For this reason, Zurich North America developed GUARD, which enables new functionality and tools to manage accumulations of such risks. GUARD incorporates information into existing underwriting systems or company reporting processes so that underwriters--before binding business--can determine how the risk impacts Zurich across its entire risk portfolio.