Although carriers as a group might not agree on their business and technology strategies, many are now pursuing the same goal: Web-based rating. Marketing, competitive advantage, and improved efficiency are among the motivations. But theres another advantageone that may not be obvious at the beginning of the process: Pursuit of Web-based rating may generalize into broader solutions. As is often the case with a responsive marketplace, new needs encourage the development of new solutionsin this case, rating technology that may finally address issues that have dogged the industry for a generation.

Rating is central to the insurance process, but it has been one of the most difficult to solve. Carriers need to rate, but so do agentsand now, perhaps, even consumers. Rating doesnt stand on its own; its intimately involved with underwriting, tiering, third-party data, submission, policy issuance, and so on.

Traditionally, solving the rating problem took one of two forms. The most common approach was to build batch rating into the carriers policy administration system, and delegate agency rating to third-party vendorsby contracting for proprietary PC solutions or being part of a comparative environment. A second, less-common approach was to find a way to create interactive rating and extend it to agentsa single platform solution.