Fresh starts are rare in life and even rarer in insurance. Yet, that's just what Enrico Ferrante, SVP, Business Operations at SPARTA Insurance Company, had when he began to build out the firm's infrastructure after its founding in 2007. Insurance Networking News checked in with Ferrante about the lessons he learned developing a policy administration system from scratch.
INN: What advantages did the "Greenfield" nature of your initiative impart?
EF: SPARTA, as a startup, had an advantage of not being constrained by antiquated legacy systems or the inefficient workflows associated with them. As a medium-sized niche carrier catering to Program Business, we did not have the typical "big company" bureaucracy to weigh us down in making technology or vendor decisions. SPARTA was able to concentrate on implementing and integrating the best vendor system solutions in the industry that aligned with our strategy. We were not distracted by legacy data conversions and system transition plans. Instead, we were able to assemble a modern and complete policy system solution designed to meet the specific needs in our Program Insurance marketplace. Our new policy administration system is not plagued by inefficiencies or a rigid inability to react to business opportunities, which is commonplace in the industry. We have been able to deliver a robust policy system solution that utilizes current technology built for ease of use and interoperability between various third-party applications. SPARTA's policy system vision of efficiency, flexibility, speed to market, data exchange, scalability and execution could only have been realized as a Greenfield initiative.
INN: What were the architectural considerations when creating the system?
EF: SPARTA required a proven Web-based solution that was built on a service-oriented architecture with a relational database policy storage configuration. We are a Microsoft shop so implementing a system that was built on Microsoft's .NET Framework running ASP.NET was important. High performance of the application over the Internet was a must-have. The system design had to lend itself to the end user feeling an immediate familiarity and comfort when navigating through it. The system's ability to be scalable both from an infrastructure and componentized perspective was also important for our future business growth. Other key system features that were required included: ease of customization, maintenance of rate/rule/forms for 51 jurisdictions, the ability to integrate with third-party applications, configuration tools, data uploads and data downloads.
INN: What competitive advantages has the system provided SPARTA?
EF: Our policy system solution has given us a distinct advantage in the program business arena. We are able to provide our partners a much-awaited robust, efficient and full lifecycle policy system with integrated third-party applications. Our program administrators have been given the ability to cut down their policy administration time and exchange data with us. Many carriers promise this, but very few deliver. This has given us a clear advantage against our peers. SPARTA's efforts to build out the best policy solution have not only been recognized by our program administrators' feedback and growth but also by one of the leading insurance analyst companies, Celent. SPARTA was awarded Celent's 2011 Model Insurer Award. The recognition was in the area of policy administration and our ability to integrate various third-party vendor applications into our product offering for a comprehensive solution.
INN: How important were standards in the construction of your policy administration infrastructure?
EF: Exchange of data via XML was an extremely important capability to support the back office. Our strategy of being able to exchange data between external and internal systems was critical in realizing an efficient and compliant operating model. Without this ability, the fundamental foundation of efficiency in our model would not have worked and our staffing would have at least doubled. SPARTA recognized immediately that our system of choice would need the ability to produce a real-time XML output file as part of every transaction. This was an essential ingredient in our regulatory reporting and accounting infrastructure strategy. In order to electronically report on such regulatory things as proof of claim, automobile liability insurance reporting, ISO, etc. we required many interfaces for internal repositories and external vendor third-party applications. One of the main benefits of XML is its ease to read and be understood by both business and technical users. XML is also relatively easy to convert and be processed by other systems. As a start-up operation, SPARTA only had six months to be up and running for business, so we did not have the luxury of time to implement all the necessary internal and external interfaces. Without an XML interface, we would not have been able to write our first policy within six months of opening our doors. Fresh starts are rare in life and even rarer in insurance. Yet, that's just what Enrico Ferrante, SVP, Business Operations at SPARTA Insurance Company, had when he began to build out the firm's infrastructure after its founding in 2007. Insurance Networking News checked in with Ferrante about the lessons he learned developing a policy administration system from scratch.
