Cover-All Blog

A key aspect of new product development for insurers is the idea that the product can be introduced to the marketplace as quickly as possible to take advantage of a perceived window of opportunity.  The reality, however, for many insurers because of their technology constraints is that it may take 18 months to two years for an insurance product to be sufficiently developed to the point where it is ready to be sold.

Fortunately, technology has answers for insurers who want to develop and introduce products in a more timely fashion.  Aaron Herrmann, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Cover-All Technologies, Inc., notes that users of his company's solutions rarely have to spend more than five or six months effort in configuring a single product, even a nationwide product.  "Between us and the client, we utilize about four to six people in the development project," he explains.  "Once we're into project itself, we have a spreadsheet that allows our client to delineate the amount of deviation they are taking from an ISO product in terms of rates, rules, forms, etc.  This is where we gather requirements necessary for the configurations."

The other path to product configuration concerns non-ISO-related or "custom" products.  "Even those products will have a basic shell in common elements with ISO products," says Herrmann.  "Umbrella-type products, for example, tend to be custom, however there are objects that can be copied from other products and reused to accelerate configuration.

"If a company needs an insurance product that we don't have out-of-the-box, then a new custom product can be easily configured," he adds.  "Custom products and lines of business, monoline or packaged products, and even program business can be configured using  Cover-All Dev Studio and Test Studio by our experienced staff, your organizations internal staff, a third-party system implementation firm of your choice, or a combination of the three.  Our unique, browser-based product configuration and testing tools allow for real-time online collaboration, rapid design, configuration, testing, and deployment of even the most complicated products in just a few months."

Even with most complex custom products, says Herrmann, "We still have yet to see one that takes more than four to six months to configure."

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