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FirstBest Systems has released FirstBest Suite 7.0 for property & casualty insurance, which the vendor describes as combining best-in-class underwriting technology with enhanced data analytics, leading workflow capabilities, and advanced collaboration tools. The vendor reports that the product has several new features resulting from FirstBest’s response to customer feedback.
John Belizaire, CEO, FirstBest.
“We are excited to introduce the latest version of our product suite to the marketplace. The record levels of premium being written through our underwriting platform every day, and the increasing number of active users, validate the success that FirstBest products deliver to our customers,” comments John Belizaire, CEO and founder, FirstBest Systems, Inc.
The FirstBest Suite comprises several applications in addition to its core underwriting workstation, FirstBest UMS:
- FirstBest Agent: Agent Portal
- FirstBest AppReader: ACORD form processing and upload
- FirstBest UMS Mobile: Mobile underwriting application for iPad users
- FirstBest Business Analyst Studio: Configuration toolkit
- FirstBest Insight: Integrated underwriting analytics engine
Version 7.0 of the suite includes both new applications and significant enhancements to existing capabilities, according to the vendor’s description:
FirstBest Insight: The newest addition to the FirstBest product suite, FirstBest Insight, allows carriers to evaluate line-of-business performance, underwriter or producer workloads, as well as other tasks, in real time. Developed in partnership with Yodil, Inc. (Charlotte, N.C.), a premier provider of insurance-based analytics software, FirstBest Insight combines industry-leading analytics capabilities with valuable data collected from within the underwriting process. Unique to FirstBest Insight analytics is the ability to compare key pricing-related metrics of a current risk to similar risks in the book of business. The solution also facilitates deep awareness about underwriting transactions, workflows, and dependencies.
Outlook Integration: FirstBest Suite 7.0 features new tools to address specific customer needs around real-time workflow collaboration with distributors. Integrating FirstBest UMS with Microsoft Outlook, the FirstBest UMS E-Mail Upload Add-In allows underwriting users to import e-mail messages and attachments directly from their Outlook inbox into the Underwriting Workstation. Once uploaded, the e-mails are stored within each submission in the new E-Mail Collaboration Tool for easy reference. From the submission’s E-Mail drawer, users can view all sent and received e-mails for the submission, and they can create and send new e-mail messages — directly from UMS. With this new tool, carrier users can even customize system-generated e-mails before sending them.
Line of Business Configuration: With the introduction of the Product Template Manager in the BA Studio, FirstBest UMS simplifies the ability to add new lines of business to carrier implementations. This capability speeds the time to market for new lines by quickly configuring the rating, quoting, binding, issuance, and endorsement features for each line from a single, easy-to-use interface.
Paul Cummings, VP, Engineering, FirstBest.
Credit Report Integration: Further expanding the information-gathering capabilities of FirstBest UMS is its new support for credit reports such as the Experian Credit Profile Report. This new integration capability provides carrier access to consumer credit information about the risk, as part of the underwriting workflow within the submission.
FirstBest Integration Services: Supporting custom integration with carrier systems, release 7.0 introduces FirstBest Integration Services (FIS). Through FIS, FirstBest UMS generates XML messages for key underwriting tasks (submittal, clearance, declining a submission, marking a submission as lost, rating, binding, submitting for issuance, and generating section documents). UMS can then automatically update the relevant forms and fields with data that is returned from the carrier systems.
“With these new features, FirstBest UMS makes huge advances in helping underwriters collect the information they need from within their UMS submissions,” comments Paul Cummings, VP, engineering, FirstBest. “The ability to access relevant documents, pictures, notes, and conversations — all as part of the underwriting workflow, within a single underwriting environment — vastly improves efficiency, collaboration, and turnaround time for FirstBest customers and their producers. Moreover, FirstBest Insight lets underwriters perform superior risk evaluations based on all the data collected during the underwriting process.”
Noteworthy Milestones
As CEO John Belizaire alluded in his above comments, in addition to new capabilities, the FirstBest Suite has recently achieved noteworthy milestones regarding market adoption and customer usage. FirstBest UMS supports more than 12,000 active users, the vendor reports. In the past year, $5.6 billion worth of customer quotes were processed through FirstBest UMS. All components of the SaaS-based FirstBest Suite continue to run at 100% uptime across customer implementations, and FirstBest continues to enjoy 100% customer retention, the vendor claims.
(Related: Atlas General Drives Improved Underwriting and Agent Collaboration with FirstBest Suite)
“Every day I talk to our customers and hear their feedback — not only about the success they experience with our system, but also about their payback from the industry-leading underwriting capabilities of FirstBest and their excitement for enhancements in our product roadmap,” Belizaire adds. “Our customers are the greatest measure of our success, and FirstBest is driven to engineer quality underwriting technology that solves important risk evaluation challenges and helps our customers grow their businesses.”