Chubb Insurance
Real-Time Data Access Gives Brokers the Edge
|
|
Company Overview
Chubb Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chubb Corporation in New Jersey, provides property and casualty insurance for personal and commercial insurance customers in Canada.
Chubb Canada services its 35,000 personal insurance customers through 250 independent brokers located in five provinces. The company specializes in high-end personal insurance such as homes, cars, fine arts, jewelry, large watercraft and excess liability policies. The average Chubb Canada personal insurance customer has multiple homes and cars. Two-thirds have a valuable articles policy (fine arts, jewelry, musical instruments and collectibles), 80 per cent have excess liability policies, and one-third have watercraft policies.
Business Challenge
Individuals and companies looking to protect their worlds continuously turn to Chubb Canada for all their personal insurance needs.
Until recently, all queries related to new or existing policies were directed to Chubb Canada’s call centre, where a broker could create new policies, revise policies, and verify the latest rates and rules with the help of a Chubb Canada representative. About 30 per cent of calls were straightforward policy queries, a time-consuming process that kept customer service representatives away from revenue-generating tasks such as revising policies or conducting transactions.
There had to be a more efficient way of doing business. What about letting brokers do their own searching? That way they could keep track of their own accounts – especially complicated client portfolios – through real-time access to information and become more responsive to their clients. The end result, of course, would be a more satisfied client base.
“We wanted to transform our call centre into a true personal insurance contact centre,” recalls Susan Vella, Chubb Canada’s vice-president, personal insurance. “People today demand better customer service – our brokers are demanding it of us and our clients are demanding it of them. We live in a world where customer service is expected to be faster and better. It was important for us to respond to this challenge immediately.”
Options Explored
The necessary steps, Chubb Canada decided, were to re-launch the public Web site and create a Web-enabled broker self-service site. The initiative would hinge on a packaged yet customizable solution that could deliver content management, security and compatibility with Chubb Canada’s existing Microsoft platform.
“In our initial research, we realized we were a bit ahead of the game,” says Vella. “There weren’t too many broker business-to-business sites up and running so we couldn’t find one that we wanted to emulate.”
In April 2000, Chubb Canada began looking for a collaborator to guide the company through this important project. Six companies responded to a Request for Proposal.
“We had a very aggressive timeline, which involved revamping the public site by July 2000 and delivering the broker self-service site shortly thereafter,” says Nicole Brouillard, Chubb Canada’s vice-president, information technology. “We needed a sizable company that could go on the attack. And we wanted someone with business processes already in place. This was our first major Web project. We needed a collaborator who could manage the scope.”
It was also important to work with familiar technology tools. Says Brouillard: “This would allow us to implement a secure, manageable and personalized site for our brokers quickly and easily. By turning to Microsoft Canada Co. and KPMG Consulting, we could leverage our existing knowledge and feel comfortable with our decision every step of the way.”
|
Solution
KPMG Consulting is one of the world’s largest consulting companies with more than $2 billion in annual revenues. More than 10,000 employees provide business and technology strategy, systems design and architecture, applications implementation, and network and systems integration, designed to enable clients to leverage technology for stronger return on investment and enhanced service to their own customers, vendors and employees. KPMG Consulting serves more than 2,500 clients, including global companies, Fortune 1000 companies, small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies and other organizations, through industry-focused lines of business, including: financial services, consumer and industrial markets, high tech, communications and content, public services and health care.
KPMG Consulting, based in Toronto, worked closely with Chubb Canada in several key areas, including helping to define the business requirements, architecting the technical solution, developing the broker and public sites, and overall project management. Slingshot Communications, based in Toronto, was selected to define the user requirements, design the user experience and to assist in identifying business requirements.
The application would need to provide the following capabilities:
• the ability to delegate user management to Chubb Canada brokers, allowing an administrator at each brokerage to manage their domain of user Ids;
• the ability to authenticate and track users using high levels of security;
• the ability to manage administrative users for each broker using a Web-based tool; and,
• the ability to personalize information at a number of different levels of granularity: based on the broker and sub-broker, based on the branch and location of the user and based on the preferred language of the user.
Security and infrastructure requirements dictated that the solutions would need to work within a firewall architecture. By all accounts, Microsoft technology proved a promising platform.
“Chubb Canada already operated and maintained a Microsoft Site Server intranet so the expertise was there,” says Bill Carrigan, principal, eIntegration, at KPMG Consulting. “Our implementation was a natural extension of that solution. It’s a Windows DNA operating system platform, involving Commerce Server 2000, SQL Server™ 2000, Windows 2000, HTML, Javascript and Flash. Few insurance providers offer the same convenience to the broker community as Chubb Canada does now.”
Chubb Canada wanted to implement a pre-packaged software products rather than building custom functionality, saving both time and money, and that’s where Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 proved particularly beneficial. Commerce Server 2000’s predecessor, Site Server, had served Chubb Canada well in the past, and the solution integrated well into Chubb Canada’s Windows 2000-based architecture. Commerce Server 2000 functionality is exposed via COM+ interfaces, solidifying Chubb Canada’s decision to go with the solution.
Development tools included Visual InterDev web development system for the Web pages, VisualBasic development system for the COM components, and SQL Server 2000 for the backend database.
Deployment Time
The public site was launched in July 2000, right on schedule. In December 2000, several brokers in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia began piloting the broker self-service site. The site will be deployed to Chubb Canada’s 90 Ontario-based brokers in May 2001, with the rest of the provinces going live by the end of Summer 2001.
Business Benefits
The broker self-service site enables Chubb Canada to deliver improved service to brokers and customers through constant access to up-to-the-minute information about Chubb Canada, its policies and its clients. Brokers need only a password and ID to access all policies, examine coverage, view payment status and much more.
“Business today moves so fast that the need to communicate with the client and get information to them in a timely fashion is crucial,” says Jeff Goldstein, vice-president of Jack Weinberger Insurance Brokers Limited in Mississauga, Ont. “Making an informed decision on the spot makes you look like the professional you strive to be. Chubb Canada’s new broker site means I don’t have to pull files or sit in a call centre queue any longer. I know who the client is even before I pick up the phone and I have all their information in front of me. The files are available 24/7, either at my office or at home, so I can help clients build strong insurance policies uniquely tailored to their every need.”
Brokers have access to Chubb Canada’s private publishing site, detailing the company’s complete rates, rules, contracts, and underwriting guidelines. Chubb Canada has been improving its product offerings over the last few years by adding new coverage options, explains Vella, and brokers have to keep abreast of the changes. Chubb Canada attempted to do that by publishing and mailing annual or semi-annual updates – at a cost of $70,000 per province – yet brokers were never quite sure if they had the most recent updates in their hands. With all current data now available to brokers online, Chubb Canada expects reduce printing and mailing costs by at least $350,000 once the system is fully deployed.
“Our costs have come down significantly,” says Vella. “We don’t even mail out our quarterly newsletters anymore. Instead, we post three articles online and refresh them every few weeks. We can get more current news out to brokers that way.”
Also available online are a broker training guide and selling tips. Brokers can train new salespeople through the Web site rather than sending them to Toronto for training. The selling tips section helps brokers present Chubb Canada in the best light “giving us one up in the broker’s office,” says Vella.
On the technical side, the Microsoft-based platform has many benefits, too.
“Commerce Server 2000 is the key component on this project, giving us the flexibility, the security and easy management of broker profiles,” says Brouillard. “Commerce Server 2000 tightly integrates into our Windows 2000 architecture. It’s the first time we have used Windows 2000 for a large development effort so there was a bit of knowledge to be gained there. There’s no doubt we made the right choice for this application.”
Turning to Microsoft also allowed Chubb Canada to leverage its current knowledge and work with technology that was familiar – an important consideration given the project’s aggressive timeline.
“We measured our needs and picked the best tools for the job,” says Brouillard. “If you’re looking to maintain a secure and personalized user base, Microsoft can help put a solution in place faster than anyone else on the market.”
Resulting Value
Chubb Canada is currently evaluating its final strategy taking the broker self-service site to the next level. While Brouillard says it’s still to early to select which tools will take them there, she admits it would be a natural progression to adopt Microsoft’s .NET architecture including Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000.
Chubb Canada has large growth goals for the personal insurance division – 14 per cent growth expected for 2001, 15 per cent in 2002 and “well over double digit growth in the next five years,” says Vella. Once the system is fully deployed, Chubb Canada expects to reduce incoming calls to the call centre by 30 per cent. The broker self-service site will enable this, since future phases will enable brokers to quote and transact their own business online, delivering even greater service to Chubb Canada clients.
“There is certainly a benefit to being on the technological cutting edge,” says Vella. “Our clients are high-net-worth individuals who are likely to be computer-savvy, interested in being online, and who expect to have access to information immediately. Having a Web-enabled site based on solid technology expands our opportunities.”
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Co. information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information via the World Wide Web, go to:
http://www.microsoft.ca/casestudies
http://www.chubbinsurance.ca
http://www.kpmgconsulting.com
http://www.slingshotcommunications.com
