An Age-Old PrOblem COver StOry
As legacy claims systems
show their age, carriers need
to consider both strategic
business benefits and the
promise of technologies
such as SOA, analytics
and even BPM.
PAge 16
Culling All Leads

The proliferation of online lead generation sites has presented promise and peril to insurers. While aggregators may provide an instantaneous connection to consumers, they also can engender back-end technology obstacles for carriers, who must sift through duplicate leads and ensure data integrity.

In addition to technical
impediments, carriers using the
Web to elicit new business face
difficulty integrating those leads
with the existing distribution
channel—without disrupting
or alienating the agent force.
Also, no matter how many
leads are generated, even the
most promising will likely
perish for want of effective
follow up. State Farm captive
Kirk Fuqua is a case in point,
using 10 aggregaotrs to generate
about 500 leads monthly, 40%
to 60% of which are converted
into policyholders.

By John Dodge
Story on page 11
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Policy Admin Revamp

Farmers Alliance Mutual Insurance modernized and refreshed its billing, claims and policy admin systems all in a matter of three years. And the work isn’t over. Just last year, the insurer shifted gears on its policy admin system strategy for its commercial, general liability and homeowners’ lines of business.

Using a buy-and-selective-re-
build approach, Farmers Alliance
Mutual employed middleware
standards that enable interoper-
ability across multiple core back-
end systems, eliminating manual
re-entry and resulting in straight-
through processing.

The standards-based approach enabled the insurer to realize incremental transformation with minimal impact on the business, and the end result is a very flexible system that Farmers Alliance Mutual is able to enhance and support without vendor lock-in.