As I’ve mentioned before, we’re working toward building real time rating in SinglePoint. WinRater will continue to manufacture and support carrier rates. But for those carriers with multi-variate rate filings or unique rating requirements, WinRater/SinglePoinnt will send a real-time-rate request to the carrier web server and return the quoted premium. Agents will enjoy the best of both worlds.We expect to begin internal testing with one well-known Auto carrier in late September/early August. We’re scheduled to begin beta-testing with agents by late fall. And the good news is we’re right on schedule!Look for a lot more information on real time rating in the next month or so.

Just getting the early reports for the month of August and it looks like agents submitted some 5,000 new business Apps to their carriers through SinglePoint.

That’s an increase of 1,000 Apps from July, a significant uptick!

Join us for “Tonya’s 30-minute Tune-Up,” a quick and informative online seminar to help your agency get the most out of SinglePoint.

Gain a thorough understanding of the SinglePoint submission workflow that is guaranteed to save you time & keystrokes.

Discussion includes setting up and optimizing SinglePoint for your agency.

Time: 1:00pm-1:30pm

Click on a date to register for a webinar:
Thursday, September 4th
Tuesday, September 9th
Thursday, September 11th

Hey, just in case you didn’t know, WinRater integrates & automates many rating functions, making your agency workflow easier. You should definitely take advantage of these:

Submission of new business Apps for private passenger auto via SinglePoint:
Arbella, Commerce, Encompass, Hanover, MAIP/CAR, National Grange, Norfolk & Dedham, One Beacon, and Travelers.
Coming Soon: Peerless, Quincy Mutual, Vermont Mutual, and others…

Submission of new business Apps for homeowners via SinglePoint:
Arbella and Safety.
Coming Soon: Peerless, Quincy Mutual, Vermont Mutual, and others…

Credit report retrieval in WinRater Home:
Arbella, Bunker Hill, Commerce, General Casualty, Hanover, Hingham, National Grange, Norfolk & Dedham, One Beacon, Quincy Mutual, Safety, and others coming soon.

Agency Management Systems:AMS 360, AMS AfW, AMS Online, AMS Prime, APPLIED, DORIS, InStar, Sagitta, SIS, Special Agent.

For more information contact Tonya at tonya@bostonsoftware.com or 781-449-8585.

We just got the SinglePoint monthly reports and it’s impressive. 4,000 new business applications have been submitted to carriers via SinglePoint for the month of July. That’s an increase of over 1,000 Apps from the month of June. And we are still adding carriers (Arbella just came onboard last week).

If your agency is not using SinglePoint, you truly are missing out on a significant way to improve your overall efficiency.

Contact Tonya at tonya@bostonsoftware.com to walk you through the simple process.

Arbella is the latest carrier to join SinglePoint for Auto and Homeowners submissions.

Now Arbella agents can instantly transfer all the rating data from WinRater to a New Business Application in SinglePoint, where it can be uploaded to Arbella Connect.

SinglePoint eliminates the need for agents to re-key data in different carrier web sites, making submission faster and easier.

There is no cost to agents for this functionality.  If you need help setting up SinglePoint for your agency, just contact Tonya at tonya@bostonsoftware.com.

We’re excited to announce that Hanover went live this week on our new SinglePoint system, which allows independent agents to submit New Auto Business Applications (after quoting in WinRater Auto Rating) quickly and easily.

Other carriers plugged into SinglePoint for auto submissions are Commerce, Encompass, OneBeacon, Safety, Travelers, and MAIP.

Carriers plugging into SinglePoint in the next few weeks include Arbella, National Grange, Norfolk & Dedham, and Quincy Mutual.

We’ve been working closely with the good folks at CAR to streamline the submission of new business applications from WinRater to the MAIP system.   We ironed out a faster “streaming” electronic transfer of data, which will eliminate a number of clicks and keystrokes for you.

The MAIP system will also be able to accept ACORD XML files now (in addition to AL3 files) from vendors like us and CGI.  XML is the latest data format, allowing for a better standard and compatibility with other vendor systems.  Adoption of a standard XML file for MA Auto by more vendors and carriers means a greater ability to transfer data with greater ease and faster resolution of problems.  CAR has been extremely responsive in this development effort.  That’s a big win for agents. 

Going forward, it also means that data exchanges with new carriers or vendors and/or for other tasks (i.e. real time rating) will come to market faster. 

By the way, our data exchange with the MAIP system will take place via our new SinglePoint platform, which you will be hearing a lot about in the next couple weeks.  SinglePont is aimed at greatly simplifying and standardizing the the submission process for independent agents.

I just got an email from Jim Barry, our Project Manager, about the progress we are making on the new WinRater, SinglePoint, and Real Time Rating.  Some of it you might not understand, but it will give you an idea of the level of activity and progress we are making.  Hopefully you’ll find it as interesting and encouraging as I did:

Steve is working on the iterative functions such as driver and vehicle information.
Resolved password requirements with data-transfer partners, the resolution will become the method we will use for all partners.
Test environments are pending with data-transfer partners.
Steve has fixed 5 of the 8 bugs identified during testing, they will be included in the build done this week.
Had discussions and sent documentation to 8 carriers regarding SinglePoint upload. Scheduling follow up calls as we get closer to implementation.

Anurag continues to develop the business requirements and develop the initial design for Real Time Rating.
Auto 2008 - Delivery date for version to be ready for QA testing is Monday 2/18, Agent Beta testing begins 2/25

Rates for 15 of the 19 carriers have been entered - Tom
Testing has been completed on 6 of the 15 - Tom
Data base conversion developed and in testing - Galina
Forms conversion continues - Carol
Deployment modifications in progress - Carol, Danny, Craig

You’ll soon be hearing a lot about our new SinglePoint software. It will make it easy to submit ACORD New Business Applications to any auto carrier and MAIP.

We had been building SinglePoint for a while, but when the Commissioner made her decision to proceed with Managed Competition we really kicked it into gear. We realized it was going to be difficult for agents to quote and submit business in this new environment. Agents were going to need a better method than re-keying quote data into different carrier web sites.

So we built SinglePoint and we included it as part of the new WinRater Comparative Auto Rating Software. Agents will be able to get an accurate quote for all their carriers, select the carrier (or MAIP) they want to submit to, and launch SinglePoint where all the rating data will prefill onto an ACORD new-business app. Agents can complete the app and click “Upload” to transfer all the data to the carrier site for verification and issuance.

We believe agents will be so busy they won’t be able to use a different workflow for each company. That’s why we created SinglePoint. The workflow will be the same for all carriers and MAIP. CSRs won’t have to learn different keystrokes and work-arounds for different carriers and rekey customer information. A standardized submission process is an absolute necessity.

We expect a number of carriers to be plugged into SinglePoint right at the start in April, with all others jumping onboard shortly thereafter.