Applied Systems Launches New Agency Management System

Applied Systems Epic(TM) enters the insurance-selling and -servicing marketplace today, offering agents and brokers the automated system they asked for to do business now and in the future.

Insurance technology company Applied Systems Inc. announced that the Epic system is in general release, after more than four years of intense development and testing by professional staff as well as agent and broker customers. Epic is built on entirely new architecture to provide the features, functions and growth capabilities that agents and brokers have requested via hundreds of meetings and more than 100,000 individual product requests.

"We asked our customers about their goals, about where they wanted to be in three years, five years, and beyond," said James P. Kellner, Applied Systems Chairman and CEO. "We also assessed marketplace trends and conditions, and we determined that agents and brokers needed an agency management system that did not yet exist. In this industry, we're the builders, and we have the insurance know-how. So we built Epic."

Kellner said the system is a rich Internet application that is free of browser-based inefficiencies and scalable to agencies and brokerages of any size. He said the new technology platform provides for easier administration, lower cost of ownership and increased efficiency and productivity.

More than a dozen beta agencies operating with Applied Systems Epic offer high praise for the system. So does a California agency that was the first to purchase Epic.

Paul Bender is co-owner of RV America Insurance Marketing, Inc., a Simi Valley agency that writes recreational vehicle insurance. Bender said his agency used a customized solution to create its own reports for the personal lines business it cultivated over 20 years. When they needed an automated system to manage their new commercial business, agency owners looked for that same customizable capacity.

"We needed a system to take us to the next level," Bender said. "We needed a system that would allow us to be creative in setting up how we want to do things, not lock us into a regimented system where we can't customize the look of our product offerings. Our people are very impressed with Epic."

Applied Systems Inc. develops, sells and supports insurance agency and broker management systems and provides services for accounting, customer, policy, claims management, and all related agent and broker functions. More than 130,000 users in 11,000 agencies of every size and complexity level use Applied Systems solutions built around core systems Epic, TAM, Vision and DORIS. In addition, the company leads the industry in agency-carrier real-time and batch communication solutions. www.appliedsystems.com