In 2000, MAX conducted an RFP for a new policy system but discovered it couldn't afford anything from the established vendors. The shortterm answer was to take an existing system some of the companies were using and modify it. “It was a Windows-based system, it was not Web enabled, and it was cumbersome,” recalls Heacock.

Heacock was brought in as CIO in May 2008, and one of his first challenges was to find out what the company could do with the patchwork system and whether the vendor market had changed to accommodate a carrier such as MAX.

Heacock spent time visiting business shows and spoke to 32 different vendors, eight of which offered detailed demos. Many gave Heacock the brush-off. “Some were nicer than others, but they basically said with the budget I had, their system could not address our needs,” he says.

MAX was prepared to move ahead with a vendor that would supply a front end on the old system to allow the carrier to do some work on the Web and do some straight-through underwriting, but at the last minute a company called Maximum Processing stepped forward with its Stingray product.

“I felt it was awful late in the game to look at another vendor, but I got a demo of the system and it looked good,” he says. “Not only did [Stingray] give us a front end, but if it did what the company said it would do, it would be a back-end system, too. Plus, it was within our budget. It actually was less expensive than the front-end-only solution we were prepared to go with.”

After checking references and conducting due diligence, Heacock came to the conclusion the system matched MAX's wish list and even offered options the carrier didn't think were possible within the budget.

Even though Maximum Processing had many good references, its clients tended to be single-line carriers. It appeared the Stingray system was capable of doing everything MAX sought, but with any contract, there can be lingering doubts. “We felt the need to mitigate that risk in the contract, though, and we were able to reach an agreement,” says Heacock.

The contracts were signed and work began in November 2009. At about this time, Maximum Processing forged a strategic alliance with 4Sight Business Intelligence, Inc. The 4Sight for Property & Casualty Business Intelligence product has been integrated into the Stingray System.

“One of the things we were concerned about was scalability,” he says. “Maximum Processing has an auto customer that ran 40,000 quotes in one day. We don't run that much, but we felt we were able to transfer that customer's experience to allay our scalability issue.”

Insurers often describe themselves as unique, but based on size and product line, that word truely describes MAX.

“We don't fit the cookie-cutter solution,” says Heacock. “There are very few people in our situation–this small with this complex of a product line. With the average vendor, we probably were going to be more of a pain than it cared to deal with for the money we could afford to pay. But with Maximum Processing, we can be a real positive for it because we are multistate, multiline, and multicountry. It gives it a chance to prove its capabilities.”

Any project includes risk, remarks Heacock. It's just a matter of what risk a carrier is willing to take and what steps a carrier is willing to take to mitigate those risks.

“At this point in our company's life, this was something we needed, and we felt we had managed the risk to the point it made sense to do it,” he concludes.

(For more on policy administration systems click here and here.)

– Robert Regis Hyle