Ohio Casualty First to Roll Out IVANS Transformation Station Across Three Agency Management Systems

Business Wire, March 13, 2003

Business Editors

OLD GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 2003

The Ohio Casualty Insurance Company has become the first insurance carrier to begin rolling out inquiry functions using IVANS Transformation Station(TM) across three agency management systems, announced Anna England, vice president and general manager of the IVANS Insurance E-Commerce Solutions Division.

These systems include AMS platforms using IVANS WebSEMCI (TM); The Agency Manager and Vision from Applied Systems; and the DORIS product.

As a data exchange, Transformation Station leverages ACORD XML standards and the public Internet to reduce time and expense for both agents and carriers in secure, real-time processing of sales and service transactions.

Ohio Casualty is rolling out Transformation Station, first for billing inquiry and loss runs, according to John Kellington, Ohio Casualty's senior vice president and chief technology officer. He said the carrier is "realizing the full benefits of Transformation Station, which are multiple vendor platforms, common data stream, and ease and quickness of rollout."

"Our agencies have the ability to start and finish most of their work in their management systems--providing the ultimate customer service to their clients," Kellington said. "With this rollout across all vendor platforms, Ohio Casualty can truly comment on the value proposition of Transformation Station."

Kellington noted that extending inquiry transactions to additional vendor platforms was relatively easy. "Ohio Casualty has made a large investment in improving our technology platforms and that investment is paying off. We provided a list of the target agents we wanted loaded on the Transformation Station server, and we regression-tested the software for inquiry transactions. We had no changes to the software," he said.

Transformation Station now has 28 carriers that have contracts, 13 of which are in production, according to England. Transaction volume and the number of active agents have more than tripled since October. Business transactions implemented include: the ability to get up to date status on billing, policy and claims, including loss runs; first notice of loss reporting; and quoting and issue for various personal and commercial lines of business.

More information about Ohio Casualty's implementations will be outlined at the upcoming IVANS E-Commerce Xchange conference, to be held April 2-4 in Tampa, Fla.

Based in Fairfield, Ohio, The Ohio Casualty Insurance Company is one of six property-casualty subsidiary companies that make up Ohio Casualty Group. The Ohio Casualty Insurance Company was founded in 1919 and is licensed in 49 states. Ohio Casualty Group is ranked 40th among U.S. property/casualty insurance groups based on net premiums written (Best's Review, July 2002). The Group's member companies write auto, home and business insurance.

IVANS Insurance E-Commerce Solutions, a division of IVANS(R), provides unique industry solutions for insurers and other property-casualty industry participants to reach independent agents and brokers, managing general agencies, risk managers and departments of motor vehicles. Products and services leverage expertise in insurance workflows, ACORD and X12 standards, data translation, edit development and execution, and unique data capture for insurers, using both EDI and real-time communications. More information on IVANS E-Commerce Solutions can be found at www.ivans.com.

IVANS, Inc., headquartered in Old Greenwich, Connecticut was formed in 1983 by 21 insurance companies to provide data networking and e-commerce solutions and services to all participants in the insurance industry. It serves over 475 insurance and healthcare organizations, more than 30,000 independent agents, and 14,000 healthcare providers.