As the market for coverage for nonprofit organizations continued to grow, the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California (NIAC), itself a nonprofit insurer, realized it would need to expand its limited Web presence to offer better service to its brokers and member insureds. It has been a four-year development process that eventually led the company to implement a secure Web site in the third quarter of this year.
It was pretty dead content [before the project began], says Susan Bradshaw, vice president, member services and marketing, for NIAC. We had to go outside [the company] to get anyone to update the site. Bradshaw along with NIACs CEO and CIO went to visit a few vendors, but she claims larger companies didnt seem particularly interested in helping the small insurer. And then NIAC found the Igneous Group, a Web site and e-business solutions provider located in Santa Cruz, Calif. Igneous embraced us from day one and saw the potential in what it could do for us as far as productivity gains, Bradshaw says.
The first step in the process was what Igneous called a messy meeting, according to Bradshaw. We brought in all the different stakeholders to talk about their wish lists for the Web siteunderwriting, claims, financeeveryone could give input on what they wanted for the Web site, she says.
Igneous presented a plan to NIAC, and the carrier prioritized the recommendations into three phases. First we did the redesign with updating of content to have our Web presence be much more sophisticated, says Bradshaw. With that came the ability to maintain and administer the site ourselves. That was important to us.
The second phase meant bringing Igneous in to work with the NIAC IT team to begin development of the infrastructure behind the scenes. The third phase involved turning the Web site into a secure site to handle policies electronically, according to Bradshaw. The site has content management capabilities that allow brokers and members to use and manage various online toolssuch as library and lending contentwhile NIAC maintains controls of information that it wants to share with its members.
Brokers can log in and download a policy as well as set up their customers with an account on the Web site so there is distributed information down to the actual customer.
The timing of the secure site was perfect, according to Betty Johnson, vice president of IT at NIAC. My team has been developing an underwriting and claims processing system, she says. The Web site allows us to take an application and go through all the processes. What we were trying to do was streamline work processes so we could keep up with the growth of business and try to do things in a more paperless environment. Capturing this data [electronically] also gives us a disaster recovery solution in case anything happens.
The company has doubled its written premium to $35 million since the project first began, according to Bradshaw. In addition, a second company was created, Alliance of Nonprofits for Insurance, Risk Retention Group, which offers similar coverage in 16 states outside California and has $10 million in written premium.
NIAC brokers are surprised at the Web sites functionality and the ability the brokers now have to manage their books of business, Johnson asserts. At any time [brokers] can go out on the Web site and see all the files that are coming up for renewal, that are due for quoting, and that are pending, she says. Its satisfying for our IT team to see this come together. You have to do business this way today, or you will find yourself behind everyone else.The project will continue to evolve, Bradshaw says. If brokers give us input on something theyd like to do on the Web site, and we think its something we want them to do on the site, well be working with Igneous to make sure we keep implementing more tools. ROBERT REGIS HYLE
The Problem: Small nonprofit insurer needed sophisticated Web site with secure features.
THE COMPANY: Nonprofits Insurance
Alliance of California
?WEB SITE: www.niac.org
Written Premium: $35 million
The SOLUTION: Igneous Group eXtensible Ebusiness Core (IGXEC) from Igneous Group
WEB SITE: www.igneous.com
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