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You learned about “The Vertafore Way” from Vertafore CEO Amy Zupon at Accelerate. Now read how her vision came to light. Her process involved Vertafore employees at all levels of the company to define the company’s principles and develop the five core values. Read more about Amy and “The Vertafore Way” here, on the NetVU Blog.
SignOn Once eliminates password pain. It was developed by kilID Federation, an insurance industry coalition working for the common good. Vertafore, as a certified SignOn Once solution provider, and NetVU, as a founding member, are at the vanguard of the effort. To help ID Federation push forward, please take our survey about password management. You can answer anonymously or enter your name into our drawing for a $50 gift card. Thank you! Take the survey here.
This year’s winner of the NetVU Automation Excellence Award in the MGA category gets accolades for meeting the needs of agents and carriers and being a leader in technology and innovation. The 2018 winner is Johnson & Johnson in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
The Automation Excellence Award recognizes carriers, MGAs and agencies that have demonstrated significant achievements in automation technology and advanced cutting-edge ideas for the benefit of the industry.
Founded in 1930, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is a family-owned and operated MGA that operates in key markets in the Eastern United States. The business is built on a foundation of long-term relationships with its agents and companies.
J&J is committed to using technology, combined with a service culture, to help its agency partners grow their business. It specializes in both personal and commercial lines insurance, and it offers premium financing through its Johnson & Johnson Preferred Financing (JJPF). JJPF uses leading-edge technology to enable agents to quickly generate finance agreements from its website.
“Johnson & Johnson is extremely proud to have received this award,” says Francis Johnson, president of the firm. “We continually strive to make it as easy as possible for our producers to do business with J&J. Our culture is to embrace change as we service our clients and create lifelong relationships.”
J&J participates in local technology user groups and was one of first MGAs in the country to offer download to agencies. The firm currently downloads with 37 carriers to agencies. It also has developed a billing process to relieve producers of the burden of agency billing which delivers the look and feel of direct billing.
J&J has also developed an internal commercial lines comparative rater and core logic integration to pull data into personal lines for quoting. The MGA attempts to create workflows and transactions similar to the standard markets agents use every day.
J&J was named Managing General Agency of the Year by the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents in 2013 and 2016.
To find out more about the NetVU Awards program, see the Awards page on the NetVU website, or contact Melissa Bond, NetVU’s member relations manager, at [email protected].
This year’s NetVU Automation Excellence Award winners in the agency category are using cutting-edge technology to improve efficiency, streamline operations and enhance the customer experience. The 2018 winners are Evarts Tremaine in Cleveland, Ohio (less than 50 employees), Deeley Insurance Group in Lewes, Delaware (50-100 employees) and BKCW in Killeen, Texas (over 100 employees).
NetVU’s Automation Excellence Award recognizes carriers, MGAs and agencies that have made significant achievements in automation technology, and have produced advances in productivity, profitability and service for NetVU members.
Evarts Tremaine has always looked for ways to become more efficient by embracing new tools or changing the way it uses current ones. It uses AMS360, PL Rating, WorkSmart, Producer Plus, Producer Manager and ReferenceConnect. In addition, it hosts three or four agencies each year to exchange ideas and share automation tools and workflows.
“Evarts Tremaine has a culture that embraces technologies and best practices to elevate the client experience,” says Carolyn Rowen, CPCU, CPRIA, quality and operations manager for the agency. “Several members of our firm made significant contributions this past year to promote productivity, education, reduce our carbon footprint, and ultimately reach out and touch our existing clients and create new opportunities. It was the perfect year to accept this award on behalf of our exceptional team.”
One of the agency’s values is “act now to be better tomorrow.” With its emphasis on being exceptional, Evarts Tremaine’s employees continuously improve their professional knowledge and skills to create a positive service experience. The agency is constantly evolving its workflows and processes to be successful in a fast-changing marketplace.
Deeley Insurance Group is embracing automation to improve its customer relationships. Agency owner Laura Deeley-Bren has challenged her team to not only adopt new technology but to ask themselves, “How will this enhance the client experience? If it doesn’t work, why are we doing it?”
For example, the agency has used WorkSmart to help its staff manage processes and improve service standards, while at the same time maintaining high-touch relationships and humanizing client interactions.
“This award recognizes the efforts of our entire agency, a group of individuals who are forward thinking as they serve the needs of our clients,” says Beth Bell, SHRM-SCP, Deeley’s CFO and vice president of operations. “We are constantly pushing the developers of Vertafore and other technology vendors to catapult the insurance industry to catch up with the rest of the world and meet the demands of our clients.”
Noting the benefit of belonging to a users group, Bell adds, “For years, we have invested in growing our people by sending a large delegation to Vertafore and NetVU events to gain insight on current features and future enhancements.”
BKCW uses a number of Vertafore products, including AMS360, Agency Platform CL Plus, Client Portal, BenefitPoint, WorkSmart, Producer Plus, DocuSign and DaaS. Educating its employees on these solutions has been one of BKCW’s key cultural initiatives, including creating a full-time resource position and building a 1,200 square-foot lab for hands-on training.
BKCW Managing Partner Tyler Spears says, “Through our use of technology and streamlined workflows, we have been able to significantly increase our revenue per service employee. We’ve also achieved savings through the use of download. We work hard to utilize our systems to the fullest to maximize efficiencies, and we were honored to be nominated for this award.”
“We have striven to increase automation and efficiency and find ways to ease the daily stresses of every agency employee,” adds BKCW Systems Information Specialist Lisa Luna. “Management has provided the insight, tools and opportunities to allow us to integrate multiple Vertafore products, share education provided by NetVU and collaborate with our partners and employees to achieve our goals. Winning the Automation Excellence Award validates our efforts over the past few years.”
Helping agencies stay connected and be more productive has kept this year’s winners of the NetVU Automation Excellence Award in the carrier category at the forefront of technology and innovation. The 2018 winners are Motorists Insurance Group, Columbus, Ohio (regional carrier), and Liberty Mutual, Boston, Massachusetts (national carrier).
Motorists Insurance Group has a long history of leadership in automation and connectivity technologies to help its agents stay competitive and better assist customers. Motorists offers agency training with live webinars, a library of videos, and onsite training in an agent’s office that includes bridging and real-time download.
This past year, Motorists engaged agents in the design of an agency portal for its new commercial lines company. It also introduced real-time bridging for quoting and new business submissions, externalized ReferenceConnect via an agent-access site, rolled out commercial lines download for all lines of business, and introduced claims download, direct bill commissions download and eDocs/eMessages download.
“It’s an honor to win NetVU’s Automation Excellence Award this year,” says Rachel Levien, business analyst for Motorists. “Winning this award reinforces that we are doing the right things for our agents, making it easier for them to do business. We also recognize and value what NetVU brings to this industry and actively participate in and host regional meetings for the U-VU Ohio Chapter.”
In May 2017, Motorists launched its new commercial lines insurance company (“Motorists Insurance”), introducing new policy administration, claims and billing systems on the Guidewire platform. The introduction also included management system interfaces, portals and interfaces with third party solutions.
With the advent of Motorists Insurance, commercial download occurs in real time, giving
agents access to an insured’s data almost instantaneously. Commercial lines real-time bridging has also saved agents time and data entry in the quoting process.
Liberty Mutual Insurance Company was recognized for its continued commitment to offering automated tools and programs to position agencies for success and to help them fully utilize those resources. Liberty Mutual strives to provide its agents with the highest quality automation capabilities possible, including commercial and personal lines download, real-time inquiry, eDocs and messages, eSignature and financial support of ID Federation/SignOn Once.
Liberty Mutual also offers best-in-class support for its agencies through its agency interface support group and regional agency interface specialists. This past year, it has worked on improving the quality of its automated capabilities by addressing issues as quickly as possible and modernizing its automated web services to improve quality and stability. Its goal is for agencies to have a consistent, high-quality customer experience.
Liberty Mutual is an active supporter of NetVU, ACT, AUGIE, ACORD and Insurance Digital Revolution.
Successful agents know that in order to compete, they have to service customers and manage their businesses efficiently. That means having direct access to accurate information, at all times. You now have access to a secure and efficient way to manage policy updates and files directly in your management system.
eDocs processing streamlines your carrier connections and you can access the most accurate policy documents throughout the insurance lifecycle. With automated eDocs processing, carrier documents are automatically attached to a client policy, eliminating time previously spent manually routing eDocs messages, attachments, and downloads, as well as the need for staff to open email, scan, file, or shred paper documents. Working within a single data exchange system allows you to experience significant time and cost savings. In fact, automated eDocs processing can reduce your document processing time by up to 50 percent, providing you with more time to spend managing the business and serving customers.
IVANS offers a free online tool, IVANS Exchange™, which allows you to review carrier download connections, like eDocs, available to your agency and communicate interest in receiving download by line of business from carriers. The benefit of IVANS Exchange is that as your business needs change, you can expand and customize your carrier download connections to match your operational needs.
For agents looking to get started with or expand their download adoption, log in to IVANS Exchange to view your IVANS Connections Report. This report is interactive and lets you indicate interest in specific carrier downloads that match your business needs and that automatically notify you when new download services are available. If one of your carriers doesn’t currently offer download, make sure you express your interest in the IVANS Connection Report. For support in receiving your available downloads into your management system, contact the IVANS Connections team and they will help you with any configuration needs.
Visit IVANS Exchange to uncover all of the download connections available to your business to save more time in your staff’s day.
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ACORD
Agency Nation/TrustedChoice.com
Agency Revolution
Angela Adams Consulting
AVYST
Bank Direct Capital Finance
BrightFire
The Cincinnati Insurance Company
EMC Insurance Company
ePayPolicy
The Hanover Insurance Group
InsureSign
IVANS
The Kotter Group LLC
Liberty Mutual
Linchpin-IT
Motorists Insurance Group
The National Alliance for Insurance Education and Research
The Omnia Group
Progressive Group of Insurance Companies
QuiKer by The Human Equation
RPost
Selective Insurance Company of America
Work At Home Vintage Experts (WAHVE)
Westfield