April 2011 Newsletter

Spring Edition | April 2011

Recommended Reading

	Automation Can Help Revitalize Commercial Lines
	Soft Market Conditions Possibly Ebbing
	Insurance Software Can Improve Distribution Channels
	P&C Insurance Growth May Continue Through 2011
	Survey Shows Opportunity for Carriers to Support Agents in Social Media

10 Ways to Improve Specialty Underwriting

As you may know, we recently announced our Front Office Solution for Specialty Lines Carriers.

Insurers today are looking beyond their existing systems to improve specialty underwriting.

As past of our announcement, we are offering early bird registration to our upcoming e-Book,
10 Ways to Improve Specialty Underwriting.

FirstBest will be hosting an interactive 45-minute discussion: "Reception and Reflections About the State of the Workers' Comp Industry" on May 5th at 3:15 p.m. at the Palm Ballroom.

We're also available for meetings throughout the conference and would love the opportunity to meet with you.

Contact us to schedule a meeting in Orlando

Specialty insurance is, well special, because each risk can be so unique and complex. At the same time, success in specialty lines insurance is built around the ability to grow the right book of business at a profit, and to quickly identify, tap into, and grow profitable new market opportunities. So how can you improve the performance of your specialty books of business?

According to Deborah Smallwood, Founder of insurance strategic advisory firm Strategy Meets Action, “SMA’s latest research (Applying Smarts to Underwriting) reflects a high increase in IT spending in specialty lines underwriting.” Let’s take a look at how insurance front office systems can help you to improve underwriting profitability, agility and broker service:

Underwriting profitability – Front office solutions bring together all of the risk, modeling and third party data that underwriters need to accurately and profitably price and tailor terms and conditions to the risk characteristics.

Business agility – Unlike hard-coded back-end systems, adaptable front office solutions bring together standardized insurance processes, along with rules, workflows, screens and data fields that can be rapidly adapted to the unique and changing needs of different lines of business.

World-class broker service – Designed for the front office, these solutions also enable underwriters to collaborate with brokers and deliver faster decisions to brokers.

Profitability, agility, service: front office solutions can help specialty lines carriers to achieve each of these goals. What do you think? What are your biggest challenges? Let me know!

Best regards,

Meira Primes,
VP of Marketing
FirstBest Systems

Recommended Reading

Automation Can Help Revitalize Commercial Lines
PropertyCasualty360.com
Commercial insurers must embrace business-automation technologies if they want to increase their market share, argues Strategy Meets Action founder Deb Smallwood. Automation has allowed personal-lines carriers to improve their underwriting and expand, but commercial carriers have not followed suit, she notes.
Read more »

Soft Market Conditions Possibly Ebbing
Insurance Networking News
If the economic recovery continues pace, the persistence of soft pricing in property/casualty commercial lines may be coming to an end, a new report from Conning Research states.
Read more »

Insurance Software Can Improve Distribution Channels
PropertyCasualty360.com
Quite a few software solutions are yielding outstanding short-term business results, but the number one answer is investing in software solutions and platform in the distribution space.
Read more »

P&C Insurance Growth May Continue Through 2011
Terms + Conditions Blog
It is now quite likely that the U.S. property/casualty insurance industry will show two consecutive years of positive premium growth (2010 and 2011) – for the first time since 2005 and 2006, according to I.I.I. president Dr. Robert Hartwig.
Read more »

Survey Shows Opportunity for Carriers to Support Agents in Social Media
Insurance Journal
The majority of agents and brokers say using social media is important for business, yet many report not using social media tools in their business today.
Read more »

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