Technology initiative of the year

Winner

Premium Credit

Premium Credit is very proud to have won the title of Technology Initiative of the Year Award. The Interactive Service, Premium Credit's award-winning online trading solution enables brokers to arrange their clients' premium finance requirements via a fast, efficient and secure internet-based platform.

Premium Credit's brokers use the Interactive Service daily to transact new business, adjustments and renewals online, access client details and run comprehensive management information.

Trading online speeds up the finance process and leads to greater efficiency.

A more efficient business means a more profitable business. Brokers can answer client queries directly without the need to contact Premium Credit, thus giving a superior level of service to their clients. Comprehensive management information such as turnover and overrider earned can be viewed allowing brokers to make informative business decisions.

The main objective was to deliver a fast, user friendly and functional distribution channel to transform the broker's premium finance administration process. Evidence of the success of the Interactive Service was demonstrated to the judges with statistics detailing how the targets had been exceeded since its launch

Premium Credit, who has also been voted Premium Finance Provider of the Year for the second year running, provides the trading choice for a more profitable, efficient and successful business.

Highly commended

Halifax General Insurance - for the Automated Fraud Referral Initiative

Halifax General Insurance (HGI) is proud to be an industry leader in the fight against fraud with the introduction of an automated fraud referral system. Technology has been used as a key enabler to smartly detect and avoid fraudulent activities in its household business.

The system compliments claims handlers manual anti-fraud experience and upholds HGI's duty to its policy holders to ensure that they are not paying for fraudulent claims.

"The industry has long appreciated the challenges in effectively combating fraudulent activity, and technology developments such as ours are welcome news for both those in the industry and for genuine claimants," said Peter Lycholat, senior manager, claims.

This technology initiative works at registration assisting in identifying potential fraudulent activity as early in the claims cycle as possible.

It provides the potential for in depth fraud analysis related to an insurers particular book of business and has high flexibility and functionality.

"The beauty of this system is that its analytical functionality is managed by the business, not necessarily by an IT or IS. We can focus on all claims, a section of claims or even just certain perils, events or situations - we can also respond to such areas overnight," said Lycholat.

Hiscox

Hiscox is pleased to be commended for their continued efforts in e-commerce in the Insurance Times Awards. By exploiting extranet technology, Hiscox has been able to provide US brokers and clients with affordable terrorism insurance via its broker trading platform INScribe.

INScribe allows US brokers to quote, bind online and process endorsements within 10 minutes. Moreover, it can produce all documentation direct to the broker's desk.

As well as providing US brokers with instant access to capacity for terrorism insurance, the system offers clear and straightforward policy wordings.

Clarity of cover for the client and ease of use for the broker offer a simple solution to finding cover that has been particularly hard to source since 9/11.

James Christopherson, e-commerce development director at Hiscox, said: "Today, terrorism is a fact of life and businesses of all sizes and types are recognising that they don't have to be the actual target of an attack to suffer damage, loss and interruption to their ongoing business, regardless of their location. Hiscox has seen an increasing demand for cover against terrorism risks and this system was launched to meet this demand. It has enabled us to look at the needs of the market and provide a cost-effective and workable solution for both brokers and clients."

Royal & SunAlliance - Group Motor Engineers

Technology has a major part to play in helping R&SA fulfil its objectives of quality customer service and cost efficiency. We are continually reviewing our existing systems and processes to see where we can bring demonstrable improvements.

In late 2002, R&SA was the first organisation in Europe to introduce comprehensive electronic rules-based estimating to the overall motor claims process, providing enhanced speed and quality of administration.

The system has two distinguishing features. Firstly, assessments carried out by a national network of approved repairers are now checked using a system known as AudaAudit - an online delegated authority system that issues a commencement of repairs without the need for an engineer to physically review. Alongside this, R&SA's Group Motor Engineers were the first in the UK to introduce access to repair cost analysis statistics via the intranet. This is to the benefit of the entire organisation.

As a result, productivity has increased to the tune of 25% and operational costs have fallen a staggering 20%. The technology has given the R&SA Group Motor Engineers the flexibility to deliver an enhanced customer proposition. With our new initiative, we believe we have set the standard.

Sirius

During the past two years, the drive to streamline commercial lines business has commenced in earnest. This drive to reduce trading costs has resulted in the emergence of commercial lines extranet facilities being developed by many major UK insurers and is becoming key to the way in which commercial lines business will be traded.

However, to gain a simple quote from the available insurer extranets, meant a broker had to key in to each extranet the same information a multiple number of times. Then, once a quote was received, it had to be re-entered into the brokers' back-office system against the client record. In response to the need to reduce the time it takes to place business and the need to provide cost-savings within the industry, Sirius has developed a revolutionary product called Stargate.

Users of Sirius' broking software product now have the ability to directly quote and place risks with a number of insurers. This is a single-key process, which is fully integrated into the Sirius back-office system.

Acting as a conduit, Stargate provides a single point of entry into a number of extranets.

At present the Insurers that are committed to Sirius' Stargate are: AXA, Zurich, Allianz Cornhill, Groupama, Norwich Union, Fortis, Markel, and The St. Paul.