Live Webcast: Thursday, May 24, 2012 — 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET

Featured Speakers

• Peggy Bresnick Kendler – Contributing Editor, Information Week Financial Services
• Ross Orrett – President and Chief Executive Officer
• Deborah M. Smallwood – Founder, Strategy Meets Action
• Robert Cummings – Head of Industry Business Unit for Insurance SAP

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In today’s competitive and volatile market, insurers are focused on expanding their business while reducing costs, mitigating risk and accelerating the speed in bringing new products to market. These corporate priorities require modernized systems that can support the challenges of today’s regulatory climate. Yet insurers still find themselves holding onto legacy systems that stall product development, spending millions of dollars with consulting firms while the problem remains unresolved.

If this sounds like your business, Camilion has the solution for you. The world’s leading insurance companies rely on Camilion to greatly improve their product development process. Camilion’s ground-breaking product development technology enables business users to build new products or modify existing ones easily and efficiently, reducing the time it takes to bring new products to market from months to mere weeks.

To learn more download this free Legacy Modernization white paper or call +1 (866) 226-4546.

In a press release, ISO announced today newly formatted algorithm files to accompany their ISO Rating Service® and ISO Electronic Rating Content offerings.  Camilion CEO Ross Orrett is quoted as saying ‘Our customers can respond much more quickly to market changes and build products that contain the most up-to-date loss cost and regulatory information. With the latest improvements to the algorithm format, ISO has significantly improved the efficiency of the adoption process, delivering rules that are more accurate, complete, and readable by both human users and automated processes.”

You can read the press release in its entirety here.

If you would like to learn more about how to directly import ISO Electronic Content, make sure to download our white paper: Jump Start the Development of Your ISO-Based Products

Markham, ON, October 12, 2011 – Camilion Solutions, provider of innovative product configuration and policy administration solutions for insurance, today announced an upgrade to its product configuration solution, ProductAuthority® version 7.1.  The solution enables product management teams to publish multiple product updates together as one release.  Teams can reduce operational risk by ensuring that related product updates are published together as one “unit of work,” minimizing the risk of errors and omissions. In addition, releases can be either deployed ad-hoc or scheduled for delivery by a specific date and time.

ProductAuthority version 7.1 also allows customers to take advantage of:

• Web services tools and components that enable insurers to integrate core and legacy systems more efficiently using industry standard technologies and practices
• Enhanced facilities to configure, customize, and format product specification documentation.

“Camilion customers are challenged with managing complex product changes and delivering them to market as quickly as possible” said Ross Orrett, Camilion President and CEO.  “In addition, they are often working with legacy systems that hold large amounts of historical data.  With ProductAuthority 7.1, insurers are able to maximize the value of existing systems and reduce product delivery time from months to mere weeks.”

About Camilion

Camilion provides innovative solutions for the insurance industry covering policy administration, product configuration, ISO electronic rating content and product lifecycle management.  With ground-breaking product development technology offering unprecedented levels of speed, accuracy and flexibility, Camilion enables its customers to deliver superior insurance products to market up to 60% faster.  Some of the world’s largest insurance companies rely on Camilion to provide new levels of efficiency to their product development process.  For more information on Camilion solutions please visit www.camilion.com or call +1 (866) 226-4546.

IASA recently launched their 2011 session papers which featured a presentation on ISO carrier services delivered by Karlyn Carnahan of Novarica, called “Get to market faster with ISO content”.

The presentation describes the challenges carriers face maintaining rates, rules and forms; an overview of ISO services; options which ISO can provide for carriers; and how Policy Admin vendors support ISO rates.

To learn more about the presentation, download “Get to market faster with ISO content”.

Insurance Networking News published a report listing the Top 10 Tech Challenges in 2011. Legacy Modernization topped the list. Is this a surprise? Not for Camilion. We have been helping insurers leverage the value of in-house systems for years.

What exactly is Legacy Modernization? Legacy refers to both hardware and software systems that are unsupported, undocumented and/or outdated. Legacy Modernization is the process of upgrading existing systems, while protecting the value of past IT investments. It is the smarter, more cost-effective and less risky alternative to enterprise “rip and replace”. Effective and strategic Legacy Modernization should always begin with the separation of all existing product content and its subsequent placement into a centralized product repository. This will provide immediate benefits in terms of speed to market, regulatory compliance and analytics. Then replace the front-end systems over time to take advantage of modern user interfaces, standard integrations and configurable processes.

For a detailed discussion of Camilion’s approach to Legacy Modernization, download our recently published white paper titled “Get More Business Value from your Legacy Systems.”

Tuesday March 8^th was a wonderful experience for Camilion customers and Camilion alike. Many virtual friendships were cemented in person with handshakes and learning at the Camilion Customer Advisory Meeting in New York City.

Tuesday morning, the day began with a welcome address from Camilion SVP Product Management & Strategy Susan Hutt, with Monika Schmidt, VP Services talking about our recent customer wins. Following Susan, our all-star product managers Steven Sigal, Allan Neil, Mario Britz and Drew Birtwistle shared Camilion’s future plans and priorities aimed at making customers even more successful at driving quality products to market faster, improving operational efficiencies and controlling costs.

Customers sat down with Camilion at lunch for topical discussions, sharing their challenges and needs to guide Camilion in its quest to create even more features for insurers. Wrapping up the day, our customers shared key takeaways regarding their two year plans as well as future requirements while reiterating what many of us know: Camilion makes a policy administration system & product development and management system, but customers are the ones who bring them to life, creating amazing insurance products and growing their businesses.

The entire Camilion team was thrilled to spend the day with so many of its customers whose attendance and enthusiasm was critical to the customer advisory meeting’s success. We are honored and thankful so many customers gathered to spend a couple of days with us.

We look forward to seeing everyone again in New York City for Camilion Customer Advisory Meeting 2011/2012 — stay tuned for details!

Last week we looked at the first 5 things to know before buying a policy administration system. In this week’s post, we examine the next 5 things to know in order to ensure a successful policy administration replacement.

6. Big Bang Implementation or an Iterative Approach. What is your history with large implementations? Consider an iterative approach to policy administration replacement. A big bang approach could take years to replace just to get into production. With a modern policy administration, the solution is componentized, so you can take an iterative approach – a series of smaller-scope, rapid implementations each addressing specific business objectives and providing you with ongoing wins. Evolving your new policy administration architecture will realize a faster return on your investment, reducing your risks and building on the constant learning that occurs during the implementation process.

7. Go Vertical, Not Horizontal. How long has the vendor served the insurance industry and how deep is their insurance knowledge? Your vendor needs to understand the nuances that exist in the North American insurance market. Experience in any of personal, commercial and specialty lines solutions is a pre-requisite to clear communication.

8. Shop Today for Tomorrow. There are many options available for purchase and you want a best-of-breed rules and tools-based system that is agile and future proof. Best-of-breed systems all you to integrate with other systems such as claims, billing and print solutions. When you make a strategic decision to replace these systems, you can easily adopt a new solution with minimal disruption to the policy administration system, helping to remove constraints for what might be done in the future.

9. Think Enterprise. Think about all your lines of business, not just the one that needs fixing now. Make sure that your Total Cost of Ownership is on a sliding scale. Your vendor should be there in the beginning, but provide tools and training so that with each subsequent implementation phase, you are doing more. Your ultimate goal is to be fully self-sufficient.

10. Look for a Track Record. You’re not just buying technology; you’re also investing in expertise and experience. Policy administration replacement is an expensive, risky proposition and the only way to mitigate that risk is to choose a vendor with a track record of successful implementations.

With these 10 tips in mind, you should be well on your way toward successfully replacing your Policy Administration System.  If you have any further questions, please get in touch with us by emailing info@camilion.com or check out one of our white papers below.

For a look at our track record download the Cincinnati Specialty Underwriters Case Study or the Forrester Case Study: CNA Insurance Deploys a Smart Combination of PLM Processes and Technology.

The strategic promise is that policy administration system replacement, if done correctly, can help Property & Casualty insurers improve time to market, be easier to do business with, grow their existing book of business, expand into new lines, reduce costs by increasing productivity, manage loss exposure and expenses and improve profitability. Insurers have realized that replacing their current policy administration system is a high risk endeavor because changes to the core processing system can impact the lifeblood of the entire organization. But upgrading your policy admin is a key aspect to your organization’s success. So, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten things you should consider before buying or replacing a policy administration system:

1. The Readiness Factor. It’s going to be hard to replace your policy administration system. So how do you know if your organization is capable of handling the challenge?

With many options available with today’s policy admin system, ensure that you understand the difference between a suite and best of breed policy administration system. Best of breed systems have standard integrations making implementation easier while suite systems have typical integrations wrapped together into one system but involve the replacement of multiple systems which can be riskier.

In order to figure out which system is best for your organization read the following white paper for more information: P&C Policy Administration Systems: Buy, Build or Outsource?

2. Business Goals. What are they? Policy administration replacement is not a business goal on its own. Do you want to be easier to do business with? Or accelerate your time to market? Or increase your productivity? Know what your business goals are and align your policy administration project to those goals. But, be sure to select a solution that is designed for change, so that you can evolve your system and meet those goals according to your plan.

3. How Modern is your IT Organization? Ask your IT team if they really want to be the “code brokers” for the business and continue the millions of lines of code needed to make product changes. Your IT organization should embrace the idea of qualified business users modeling, creating and revising your products as modern policy administration systems put the power in the hands of the business users, giving IT to focus on more strategic initiatives.

4. Should you “Supersize Your Fries”? Do you want an end-to-end solution, addressing everything from quoting, rating, billing, claims and more, or a best-of-breed solution that allows you to preserve existing investments by integrating with other systems using standard interfaces? You need to determine which solution is right for you.

5. Biggest Bang for your Buck. You can realize huge costs savings and revenue gains when replacing your policy administration system by paying special attention to a key area of your business – product development. Product configuration should exist at the heart of your policy administration system allowing product information formerly contained in various hard-coded operational systems to be stored in a central product repository. Insurers can inherit or assemble re-usable product components from the repository to modify existing products or build new ones – in weeks, instead of months – without affecting processes, which dramatically reduces the time it takes to get products to market.

These five tips should give you a head start at doing the leg-work required in researching what the best system and approach is for your organization. Tune in next time for the next five steps!

Recommended reading: True Speed to Market: Product Configuration Must be the Heart of Your Modern Policy Administration System

Celent, a leading financial services research firm, recently published their annual Celent Model Insurer Report outlining effective uses of technology in twelve categories such as policy administration, underwriting, product design and definition.

You are probably asking yourself what is a “Model Insurer”?  Well, according to Celent there is no such thing as a “Model Insurer”—every insurer does some things well, and others not as well when it comes to technology.

The vision for Celent’s Model Insurer research is to try to answer an apparently simple question: “What would it look like for an insurer to do everything right with today’s technology?” Of course, the question is not nearly as simple as it appears. The terms “everything” and “right” mean very different things to different insurers depending on their size, the complexity of their operations and product sets, and their technological starting points.

Within the Property & Casualty market, the impact of insurance product freshness and getting quality products to market faster has proven to have a positive financial impact on the bottom line.

Whether a company attempts to roll out an entire new line of business or make one change to a rate table, the time to market can take anywhere from minutes to months. Being nimble enough to adjust pricing strategies and provide competitive new insurance products is crucial to a company’s ability to adapt to a difficult marketplace, but overburdened IT departments required to write code for every alteration can create huge bottlenecks for the business.

CNA Insurance, the 7^th largest U.S. commercial insurer, was recognized as a 2011 Celent Model Insurer in the category of product design and definition for their ability to successfully improve IT and business alignment in the insurance product development process enabling them to get quality products to market 30% faster.  This strategic initiative to streamline processes, reduce costs and increase capacity for insurance product development may sound relatively easy, but in large organizations to get all key stakeholders aligned and working together to create consistent, repeatable processes is a significant achievement.

With over 300 product changes per month, CNA realized that there was an immediate need to change the insurance product development process to eliminate high-touch, error-prone manual processes in order to reduce overhead and enhance product innovation. To accomplish their goals, they needed to make insurance product lifecycle management a core competency.

Collaboration with all the business and IT users was also critical. To succeed, they would need buy-in from key stakeholders from underwriting, actuarial, claims, marketing and other departments. To bring together these diverse groups and align IT and business stakeholders, CNA selected Camilion’s ProductAuthority, an insurance product development and management solution built specifically for the insurance industry.  Today, approx. 600 individuals including underwriters, actuaries, product developers, product managers, product architects, business system analysts and executives are involved in the new processes and technology.

Congratulations CNA for being recognized as a 2011 Celent Model Insurer!

To read the full Celent 2011 Model Insurer Report click here or for further information on how CNA has increased their time to market click here to read the article Faster, Better, Cheaper featured in Insurance & Technology.