Insurance Industry Continues to Take Major Steps Toward Improving Agent-Carrier Communication with Major Milestone in Automation Technology

Tampa, FL (PRWEB) March 15, 2012

IVANS, Inc. has become the first insurance carrier exchange in the industry to reach more than 208,000 independent agency-company pairings. Growth in this area has been consistent, and in the last 12 months IVANS agency-company pairing transactions have increased by 13 percent, with significant increases in usage by both line of business and transaction type occurring across the board.

When asked about reaching this important industry milestone, Jim Ochiltree, IVANS president of property/casualty services, said, “We are excited to be the first to surpass 200,000 agency-company pairs, but we see this as just the beginning of more milestones to come. IVANS remains committed to being at the forefront of facilitating agent-carrier communication through the use of automation tools like download and real-time.”

An agency-company pairing is defined when a carrier and an independent agent connect via download technology using IVANS Insurance Carrier Exchange (IVANS ICE) platform; each connection is considered one pair. On average, an agency connects to six carriers each day. Download technology enables carriers to send policy information in batch format via agency management systems quickly and efficiently. Using industry-standard formats, IVANS ICE downloads data to electronic mailboxes on the carrier and agent side, enabling agents to pick up the responses to their requests as soon as they are available. As the largest one-to-one, one-to-many data exchange platform in the industry, IVANS ICE is used every day by the majority of insurance carriers across the nation, and manages over nine million transactions exchanging monthly.

In addition to reaching this industry-first milestone, IVANS announced it is now certifying 41 agency management systems during the initial implementation of all download projects with insurance carriers. In addition to Applied Systems and Vertafore being certified in the initial process, IVANS is now including such agency management system vendors as Agency Business System; Appulate, Inc.; Ebix, Inc.; Hawksoft; NASA; QQ Solutions; Strategic Information Systems (SIS); and XDimensional, to name a few. Bruce Dickoff, president of NASA said, “IVANS recognizes that by certifying all agency systems with the initial download implementation, the ease of doing business will be significantly improved with thousands of agents and carriers across the country. NASA has already seen an influx of certifications coming in, and I am confident this will have a tremendous impact on helping our agents speed up their insurance transactions, reduce errors and increase efficiency”.

Certification plays a critical role in the download implementation process because it ensures that the information from the agency management system will be downloaded properly between an agent and carrier. After IVANS does the mapping and translation, sample policies are sent to the agency management system vendor to make certain that all the fields are correct within the vendor’s application. If there are any issues, IVANS makes the necessary changes to the script and, once everything is running properly, the agency management system is certified. On the carrier side, agents are registered on IVANS agency registration system and added to the download file by the carrier. Lastly, the agency runs a one-time utility to add the carrier to its download system and the process is complete.

Ochiltree said, “IVANS expertise of working with more than 40 agency management systems makes the certification process occur faster because we understand both the business and technical requirements of the carrier and agents. Our staff has tremendous experience in mapping field data according to ACORD standards and making any necessary scripting changes that are required. In fact, in most instances, the agency management system gets certified on the initial file submission, enabling carriers and agents to focus their efforts on going after new marketshare and growing their business instead of systems tasks.”

About IVANS
For 29 years IVANS, Inc. has been the largest insurance carrier exchange in the United States that is trusted by more than 350 insurance carrier customers and 30,000 independent agents nationwide. Known for being a forerunner of ACORD standards with numerous ACORD awards and ACE Certified recipients, IVANS focus on agency-company interface solutions includes AL3 based policy and claims download, and XML real-time quote, issue and service transactions. IVANS, which was founded by 21 insurance companies and is headquartered in Stamford, Conn., also has offices in Tampa, Fla. and Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information, visit http://www.ivans.com/property-casualty.

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