Insured's Online Information System

The Internet offers you a lot of possibilities.  While I'm not an advocate of hosting your management system online (except under specific conditions), I am a strong advocate of the many uses the Internet offers you.  For example, isn't it great how you can go to a carriers website and have full access to your insured's information? 

Check payments.  See how claims are coming.  Collect specific policy information.  And much, much more.

It's an incredible convenience that saves you lot's of time and thus allows you to do your job better and faster.  The Internet is well known for being able to do research and collect information.

What if you could upload to a website your insured's information so they could have access to their data?  Much like you can by going to a carriers website. 

Your insured's could check out their coverages, see what you have listed for drivers and vehicles, print ID cards and Certificates, even print a DEC page and so much more.

What an incredible value-added benefit this feature offers your insured's exclusively from YOUR agency!  When you offer your insured's this kind of service and easy access to their information, it'll be really hard for them to switch to another agency where they won't have this kind of a tool.

The Details:

The purpose of this page and the questionnaire below is to collect information and determine how much of an interest there is for this kind of feature.

First, what you must understand is what we can send to the website is dependent upon what information we can pull from your InStar system.  What you also need to know is that there are numerous tables in the isdata.df* datafiles that have memo fields we currently cannot convert. 

Here's how we initially see this module working (I'm certain this will change as we collect more ideas and information associated to this module).

We'll build a very elaborate, yet very easy to use, web based system for your insured's to access.  With the web based system, your insured's will first have to put in a user name and password unique to them to access their data.  We'll capture their username and password in the base system that you can email to your insured's if they loose this information.

When they log in they'll have the ability to see their basic information such as name, address and contact information.  With a click of a button they will also be able to see policy coverages, drivers and vehicles (all depending, of course, on what policies they have and what information we can pull out of InStar).

The plan is to allow them to print ID cards and certificates of insurance (Special Wording & Remarks won't currently carry over).  How cool would that be? 

They could make policy endorsement requests, other change request and/or general requests to the agency from the system.  Should they make a request, it will be clearly stated along with a notice that they would have to AGREE to that coverages cannot be bound or anything else from this communication method to protect you from E&O exposures.  (We'll all put our heads together to have the correct verbiage they have to agree to before a notice/request is sent to the agency.)

Remember, we are in the "collecting information" stage.  Because this would be a massive programming job we absolutely want to make sure we collect as much information as possible so we can build into the system the features you want to see.  We don't want to start this project and learn of new key features that would require a re-write of this module.  We want to do it right from the very beginning.

To populate the website with data we'll have a feed from the Policy Analyzer to a special website where the data will be hosted.  On a daily basis you'll simply click a few buttons that will export your data and upload it to the website.  We'll work hard to make this part as easy and quick as possible so there's no reason not to update the data on a daily basis.

Below is a questionnaire.  A number of the fields are free-form where you can just type to your hearts content on a specific topic.  We feel free-form fields are important in a project like this because check boxes "lead" you where we want you to open up your mind and really think how you would want a tool like this designed.  What functionality would you want to give your insured's?  How much access to their records would you want them to have?

Please fill out the questionnaire below.  Users of the Policy Analyzer have the final say of what features and functionality this module will offer.  However, any InStar user can offer input for users to vote on.

Upon collecting input from the questionnaire below, once we feel like we've got a good picture and understanding of what everyone wants we'll create a new questionnaire that only users of the Policy Analyzer will have access to.  From this questionnaire users of the Policy Analyzer will vote on what this module will ultimately offer in the way of functionality and usability ... another good reason for you to become an owner of the Policy Analyzer if you want to have voting rights to upcoming modules and features.

This would not be a mandatory upgrade.  It will be setup as a purchasable module.

Please fill out the following questionnaire and vote ...