Revolutionizing QA technology for carriers and insurtechs

Live from ITC Vegas, discover how Emtech is helping Insurance Companies and Insurtechs transform their QA their software projects faster and more efficiently than ever.

At the ITC 2024 Vegas conference, InsuranceNewsNet Publisher Paul Feldman speaks with Rob Secontine, VP of Sales, and Sashia Godet, Product Manager, from Emtech Group about their flagship software, QMT, which is designed to enhance quality assurance (QA) for insurance carriers and insurtechs. QMT automates QA testing processes, allowing companies to launch products faster with fewer defects. The software is built to streamline and increase the effectiveness of QA testing, addressing challenges in the industry, such as delayed product releases and quality issues that impact brand reputation.

QMT uses a knowledge-based approach to model business processes and generate comprehensive test cases. Its advanced algorithms create an efficient testing process, enabling companies to achieve up to 80% test coverage, a significant improvement over the industry’s typical 10-15%. This broad test coverage minimizes costly post-launch errors and helps clients reduce revenue loss from QA delays.

The discussion highlights Emtech’s recent addition, QMT TrueXML, which validates XML data transfers, ensuring data integrity in underwriting and other critical workflows. Looking ahead, Emtech Group plans to expand QMT’s capabilities to include PDF and API validation. They also explore AI integration to aid in model creation, making the setup process more intuitive and accessible across organizational roles. QMT democratizes QA, making it usable for various team members, not just QA specialists. This ease of use accelerates QA processes, delivering products to market quickly and efficiently, which is crucial for carriers and Insurtechs aiming to stay competitive.

Video Transcript:

Paul Feldman:

Hello everyone. Paul Feldman insurance news net. I am here live at ITC 2024 and I am here with Rob Secontine fromEmtech Group. And we're going to talk a little bit about what you guys do because you are a very dynamic company.

Rob Secontine:

Well, absolutely, Paul. So Emtech Group is a software development company that has built a purpose-built quality assurance software called QMT for the insurance carriers, as well as the insurtechs. And it does deliver that quality because our product automates the very critical QA process that all carriers and insurtechs alike have to deal with when trying to bring products to market or revisions of products to market.

Paul Feldman:

That's kind of a broad statement. Tell me a little bit more.

Rob Secontine:

No, that's a great question. I mean because in today's marketplace, the digital transformation that has been really undergoing by all carriers and insurtechs has produced really significant issues within the organization as they try to meet the challenges that the business presents them. And those are usually getting more products to market, doing it faster and trying to do it with the least amount of day two embarrassing issues that are really brand killers. Our product automates the QA process and delivers much faster time to market. And it does so with the fewest material defects, meaning that you don't suffer from those day-two issues that are really embarrassing for carriers. How do you do it?

Sashia Godet:

So as Rob said, it is a testing software. We automate the testing process, and we use a knowledge based approach to allow our users to model their business process in our application. From that model, our proprietary algorithm figures out what are all the test cases that cover this business flow, including all the individual test steps. And then from there you can execute it with our application and at the end of it you get a report with all the results of which one's passed, which one's failed, more details in terms of areas to pinpoint for resolution. So, it's all encompassing, and the user just has to set up their model. The rest is taking care of via application.

Paul Feldman:

What are the biggest challenges your clients face?

Rob Secontine:

Well actually, Paul, our clients consist of both carriers as well as insurtechs. And both of those kinds of companies face these challenges of trying to get product to market quicker and with the fewest problems associated with those product releases. I mean imagine if you're an annuity house and you have it in your business plan that you're going to release an annuity in June. Well, what would the impact be, for example, if that annuity was released in March instead of June? Think of the revenue implications of that. That's the kind of thing that our solution can deliver to a carrier or an insurtech. Think about an insurtech trying to bring a product to market if they can do it six months sooner than they thought, it gives them, again, an edge on their competition to having products positioned in the marketplace sooner.

Paul Feldman:

Alright, so what's your secret sauce? How do you do it?

Sashia Godet:

If it's secret, I can't tell you. But essentially what we do is from your model, we traverse all of the, we call them nodes. So, your model is constructed of nodes and edges and the nodes are just little boxes that you drag and drop onto our canvas and you set up a configuration and you connect them together based on how the business flow works. And from that we read the contents of those boxes, figure out the connections between them, and then consider all of the combinations and permutations between them and come up with a suite of test cases for you. So that's really at a very high level what we do, how we do it. As you said, it's a secret sauce and that's what makes our product so unique.

Paul Feldman:

Alright, so tell me a little bit about the secret sauce.

Sashia Godet:

Well, we have two algorithms. One is a minimum resolution and that's designed to look at your model, figure out what are the least amount of test cases that are required to cover that entire process. And it does that. And then we have a maximum resolution which looks at the same model, looks at all the combinations and permutations between the connections there and comes up with a wider suite of test cases that usually includes all of your edge cases, your happy path and the combinations in between.

Rob Secontine:

And so, if you think about it from a perspective of trying to create these test cases, and that's the big issue for carriers because most carriers will tell you they only achieve maybe 10 or 15% total test coverage of a new product launch or an update even. Well, what this product does is give you the ability to exceed that by tenfold. Maybe we're getting 70, 80% test coverage. And again, what that does is it does it in an automated fashion. So, the user simply creates the model, the software creates all the tests, generates them, and then executes them all in background if you want. And at the end of the day, you get that much faster time to market with the fewest material defects possible.

Paul Feldman:

So, what are insurance carriers getting wrong?

Rob Secontine:

That's a good question. Okay, so most insurance carriers are trying to get it right, but they're not quite getting there. And by that, I mean they know that they need to improve their quality assurance standards, and they all are seeking to do the automation of that part of the process. What's difficult is either applying more FTEs to the process, which is obviously costly. And the other problem with FTEs is that we are humans, we make mistakes. Software on the other hand doesn't or is substantially more reliable when used appropriately. And so most carriers are still not able to cross that chasm, if you will, of being able to create enough test cases to satisfy their need for completeness and accuracy. And so, they don't, and they'll release a product and hope for the best time and time again. That's what I'm told by carriers. We know we're going to get issues; we just fix them at the time. Well, that's a brand killer. Why don't you fix them early in the process? Because as Sashia is saying, what we do is really shift left in the entire development process so you can identify those errors much earlier in the process where they are easier to fix, easier to identify, and a heck of a lot less expensive to fix at that time.

Paul Feldman:

So what are the big errors that companies are finding right now?

Sashia Godet:

I guess it's more the thing of when they release products, agents log in and things are not working.

Rob Secontine:

Great point, great point. And that's the biggest problem. Most carriers distribute their products through agents and most agents represent multiple carriers. So, if they're using an e-application, for example, for one of their customers and it doesn't work properly, they just go to the next one and that first carrier loses that opportunity. Why? Because their product simply didn't work when it went to market. And so we help carriers eliminate that possibility altogether. And so missed opportunities create a lack of applications per hour and policies per day. And if you don't make your applications per hour and policies per day numbers that you're targeting, your revenue suffers. Simple as that.

Sashia Godet:

QMT is our base product. We recently launched an addition to that product called QMT, TrueXML, and it's exactly as the name describes. We are validating the XML data in the testing process. So, think about new business underwriting, for example. Client fills out the app and that information goes to underwriting for review to decide whether they're going to issue the policy or not. Between those two applications, there is a data transfer in the XML file format and that data is very critical because it's the information that the underwriters are going to use to make a decision. And so the completeness and accuracy of that information is important and that's an area that carriers have been struggling with to validate because they're doing a light bulb test, they're taking one XML from their test read and looking at it before and after changes and figuring out whether it's good and not having a more wholesome approach to testing. So, with TrueXML, we've added that onto our core product and while you test your business process with our core product, an extension of that, you set up some configurations of what you want to validate your XML, and we validate both end to end. So, you get your business process validated that provides the input to the XML, and then you also get the XML validated against those inputs to ensure that you have accuracy in the business process, as well as in the XML data transfer as well.

Paul Feldman:

Tell me a little bit about what you guys are doing in the next year, two years? Where do you see AI fitting into your business model?

Sashia Godet:

Excellent question. Our roadmap is pretty long and pretty lengthy because we've been out here talking to our customers and prospects, and they've given us a lot of insight into the pain points that they're having. So TrueXML came out of that. We spoke with a number of carriers and they said that's something that they've been struggling with. And so we rolled that out. Next on the roadmap is validation of PDFs. So similar struggles there and we will be rolling out a validation for that after that be API validation. Then JSO and the list goes on. In terms of AI specifically, I'm glad you asked about that because it's a buzzword and sometimes it's just a buzzword. Sometimes there's actually value that you can derive from that. And so we've done a lot of research to figure out where we can incorporate into our product to give our users the most value. And we found that in the model creation process, which is the process where the user has the input to build out their workflow, that AI can assist them in building out that workflow. That makes it easier for them to set up the model and then the rest we take care of. I think that is something where we see the most value with the use of AI in a product. And that's something that we're currently exploring.

Rob Secontine:

And maybe we should also talk a little bit about, for example, how the product is used and what the benefits are in the organization of the actual use of the software. Our software is a desktop application currently, and the interesting thing about it is that it's very easy to use and you don't need to be an MIT genius, for example, to use it. The other thing that people have told us, I recently had a user tell us you've guys have democratized QA. And by that he meant not only are QA people using our software, but it's pushed down in the organization to product development people, etc. And what that does is it really makes the QA much more efficient. And so when we talk to our prospects and customers about our product, one of the biggest things that comes to the top of the table is, wow, you're going to make my QA department three times, four times, five times more efficient so I can get way more done in the same amount of FTE hours than I was doing before. And that translates into faster time to market and better quality.

Paul Feldman:

Well guys, it's been awesome interviewing you and I just want to thank you for your time.

Rob Secontine:

Thank you, Paul.