Connecting brokers with insurers with clients is the name of the game – and for one third-party provider, it should be an ‘experience.’
“We have something called the ‘Connected Experience’ – from a broker, from an insurer, and from an insured perspective,” says Stéphane Lacasse, vice president of product management for Canada and rating products. “We cover all the different stakeholders in an insurance transaction, from the insured going through the broker to the insurance company.”
Lacasse sees the Connected Experience falling into four different buckets: brokerage technology, insurer connectivity, insured connectivity, and cloud technology.
“That is Applied’s roots – the brokerage. Applied TAM is still the most popular broker management system in Canada from a user’s perspective,” says Lacasse. “It is doing very well, and we are continuing to invest in Applied TAM.”
Applied introduced its most recent brokerage management system, Applied Epic, in 2013.
“We’re finishing the roll out of Applied Epic next year with Western Financial Group for all of their offices,” says Lacasse, “and also we are in implementation mode with some of HUB’s offices that are already live, with more going live through 2015 in Canada and the U.S. Those are two of our flagship accounts.”
What brokers like about Applied Epic is that you can view everything in one data base, says Lacasse, providing a single view so you can see client information for all of your offices. Whereas if you have a management system that is not as good insofar as scaling, you may have to have multiple data bases.
“If you think of HUB," he says, "and all of the HUB offices being in on a single management system with Applied Epic, is pretty extraordinary.”
From a brokerage perspective, there is a product called Applied MobileProducer, which allows a producer to go on the road with a tablet and be connected to their broker management system. (continued.)
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“You can have everything in your BMS at the tip of your finger on the road,” says Lacasse, “and be able to make changes. And it is an application that we’ve built at Applied; it is not just an app that is browser friendly, but an actual app that you download. Anyone who has tried to run an app in a browser knows it isn’t as nice as an actual application.”
Applied Systems has been making a concerted effort to expand in the Canadian market, including a new corporate headquarters in Mississauga and opening a new data centre.
“It shows that Applied is investing in the Canadian business and has proven that with the investments and purchases in companies like Compu-Quote,” says Lacasse.
Applied PerformanceManagement allows the broker to see an ongoing snapshot of their business, a dashboard that allows the broker to see how the business is performing.
“It is real-time, dashboard reports where you can dig in to your business and really see where there’s growth opportunity, identify market share for certain carriers, or market growth for regions you may not be as strong,” says Lacasse. “It takes the data that is in Applied TAM or Applied Epic and gives the broker a chance to extract that information and really see what’s in there.”
“We all know that data is the big thing that people want to explore and see what their business is doing, and from an Applied perspective, we saw the need and launched Applied Performance Management to allow the broker to get a better view of their business. And it is very insurance-specific, the information that is provided.”
