Underwriters, Brokers Save Time And Money With Policy Management Enabler From LAVA Systems

Home and auto policies can be issued or changed 'on the spot' for better customer service

Toronto, ON - 1998-09-17 - LAVA Systems Inc. today announced general availability of LAVA Policy Management Enabler , the latest addition to LAVA's Enabler family of solutions for the insurance industry. Enabler products improve customer service and reduce costs for companies involved in creating, processing, and managing insurance policies and claims.

"The initial versions of our Policy Management Enabler have been up-and-running successfully at three western Canadian financial institutions since January," said Peter Hamilton, President and CEO of LAVA Systems Inc. "The solution's stability, flexibility and ease-of-use continues to generate great interest on the part of home and auto insurance underwriters and brokers, which will translate into more signings shortly," he added.

INSTANT POLICY CHANGES MADE EASY LAVA's latest Enabler solution dramatically cuts the time and effort required to create, approve and distribute a new home or auto insurance policy, and makes changes to existing policies fast and efficient. First-time applications and changes to existing policies that traditionally had to be relayed to an underwriting organisation for processing now can be done at the broker's desk or over the phone.

"The big advantage of Policy Management Enabler is its ability to provide hassle-free, instant policy changes," said Martin Owen, VP, LAVA Corporate Marketing. "Amending the terms and conditions of a policy can be a time-consuming process for all parties, but we make these changes easy for the customer, the broker and for the underwriter. We see PME as a customer-facing system that strengthens customer loyalty while reducing costs." To create a new policy, the Policy Management Enabler solution automatically matches the underwriter's rating information that is stored on the broker's workstation with the applicant's answers to a simple, pre-defined electronic questionnaire. The customer and the broker can view a number of 'what if' scenarios and compare premiums and riders immediately, and when a decision is made, the policy is printed out, fully approved, and handed or mailed to the customer. Changes to the policy are easily done by calling up the policy on the spot and entering the new information.

The LAVA system automatically converts the new or changed policy information into Canadian Standards Insurance Organisation (CSIO) code, which can be individually or batch processed and transferred directly to the underwriter's mainframe computers for their records and to meet legal requirements.

Release Disclaimer

Note: Open Text and Livelink are trademarks of Open Text Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

For more information, please contact

Margaret E. Dobbin
Director, Industry Analyst Relations
Open Text Corporation
+1-519-888-7111 ext.2410
mdobbin@opentext.com

Monta Kerr-Johnson
Account Director
High Road Communications
(416) 368-8348
mkerr@highrd.com