We have been asked to help explain the real time process to quite a few of our carrier friends.
We want to clarify what we are attempting to accomplish for you, our agency clients.
Once they see the difference, they are without exception enthused and ready to help make it happen if they can.
Bridging, here forward called Upload can produce different prices than the rating vendor quote.
Although we are very good at this, he quotes you see were produced by programming done by the rating vendor rather than the carrier.
There is no record of your quote on the carrier's system until you upload it at the end of the quote.
It puts you at the beginning of the quote rather than at the end.
Real Time will match 100% of the time, because the quoting is done solely on the carrier side.
During real time rating we submit the data you entered to their rating engine and receieve a response with the computed rates.
An index number is sent back so you can Link to the quote that was produced.
It can however change once you link to the quote in the carrier system and change information.
This is to be avoided if you want your original quote to be honored.
We have seen quite a few variances come in, and when we call support at the carrier they track that changes were made by the agent.
Evolution™ only uses genuine Real Time technology whenever and wherever possible.
Once real time is in place we discontinue to manufacture, or program rates for that carrier.
Not many other rating vendors take this extra precaution to get you a guarenteed rates.
As long as the information you enter is accurate your quote will be honored.
We are helping many carriers bring genuine Real Time to our Michigan agencies.
We will define what we mean by "genuine" further on.
If we use upload with a carrier rather than real rime rating, we will show you right at the point you select which carriers to quote.
And we are actively persuade them to move to real time rating.
It is important for you to know the difference if you are going to distinguish merely uploading information from rating company manufactured rates, and genuine Real Time Rating.
This is the only way you can help our campaign to end price variations in a comparative environment entirely.
We, as do you, want maximum accuracy.
The following explanation will help clarify the differences.
Evolution™ has incorporated Real-Time Rating as an integral part of its quoting process.
We can now bring up a Real Time Project from our end in only a few weeks.
We are working with numerous carriers to bring this new technology into general use in Michigan.
All carriers have expressed interest in working with us.
But what exactly distinguishes real time rating from bridging, upload, credit grabbers and earlier technologies (such as carrier specific web rating)?
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To be considered optimal real time rating, all of the following components need to be present.
1. The vendor rating engine gathers data and assembles the raw data into an XML data file
2. The XML formatted data is transmitted via internet to the carrier's rating engine
3. Credit Score and other data such as geocoding required by the carrier are assembled by the carrier system
4. MVR and Clue reports are not typically run until you issue. These uncover whether the insured failed to disclosed all drivers, violations, vehicles etc. These are the things the agent asks before issue.
If it changes the rate, this was under the control of the client when asked by the agent to disclose this information and they have but themselves to blame.
5. A record of the transaction is made in the carrier system and a key code is assigned to it.
6. The carrier system derives all base rates, class codes, cost symbols, tiers, etc.
7.The carrier system rates the transaction, assembles it into an XML file including the Key code, and transmits it back to the vendor rating engine.
8.The vendor rating engine breaks out the rates, and displays the results to the agent in a comparison format with the other carriers that may not be real time rated.
9.A link button is displayed so that should the agent wish to issue that transaction as a policy, it opens the completed rating transaction using a key code sent to Evolution™.
10.This allows the agent to issue the policy exactly the way it was originally sent.
A component of this transaction to qualify as real time rating is that the carrier system does NOT require re-computing the quote once you enter their system after viewing the real time rate in the comparison rater.
Only you can cause it to rerate by changing data on the carrier’s site.
This means that as long as you do not change anything, and all the information you entered is correct, the rate is guaranteed accurate as the carrier issuing system did all computations and rate development.
Capital Software is committed to bring our agency clients a carrier rate engine quote using the real time rating technique.
We encourage the optimum scenerio as described.
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Upload involves the following process:
1. The vendor rating engine gathers the data. A credit score is pulled by the vendor system like Speedscore™ from one of the reporting services or from the carrier web site.
2. The data is fed back into a vendor-manufactured quoting module that emulates the carrier issuing system. All class codes, cost symbols; tiers etc. are assembled by the vendor-manufactured quoting module.
3. The vendor-manufactured quoting module transmits the rates back to the rating engine, which then displays the rate.
4. The results, if the agent wishes to issue the policy, are assembled into an AL3, XML, or other type data file.
5. The data is uploaded via the internet to the carrier website. The carrier system then RERATES the data using a carrier rating module.
6. It may or may not be the actual issuance system doing the rating.
7. A transaction code may or may not be created within the carrier system that would allow you to open the uploaded quote at a later date.
This is significantly older and less efficient technology compared to real time rating technology.
Real-Time Processing is a completely different concept, and is not Real-Time Rating.
Processing involves adding a vehicle or a driver, or some other changes to an existing policy in Real-Time.
This means your management system (Applied, AMS etc.) connects to the carrier system and processes the change as it is entered into the management system.
It is possible to do a new prospect by uploading the bare bones into EACH carrier site, then filling in all the remaining information.
This is little different from web rating all your carriers.
The carrier processes the change and uploads the result immediately to the management system.
This is very different from Real-Time Rating because most of the data has to be already resident on the carrier system to process the request.
A comparison of rates between different carriers is not an element of this very limited application.
There will come a time when your Evolution™ system will be able to do Real Time Processing for you as well.
All that is needed is carrier participation.
We carry all of the data needed to rate versus what a management systems database carries.
They serve two completely different purposes.
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