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Are there any other options besides FSC Rater in CA? I heard another agent mention something that's about $70/month... but I can't seem to find their website now.

Thank you in advance.

FSC Rater is the best in California.

Try ezlynx.com. I don't know their pricing, I think it's based on number of markets. They have good reviews from most of the country, but I don't know about California.

Good Luck!

You may also want to contact SilverPlume. They have a great personal lines rating product called PLRating. You can go to their web site http://www.silverplume.com and select pl rating on the left side of the page and that will give you lots of information about the product and contact information to get a demo. I use this product and love it and have used Ezlynx. I like PL Rating much better from a usablity and end product stand point. The proposals and the information gathering tools are teriffic.

Thanks for the helpful reply's. How much does Silverplume cost?

We're in Eastern PA so I'm not sure about CA but we use EZ Lynx & love it. Easy to use, requires no special software & adding new carriers all the time.

steve32 wrote:Thanks for the helpful reply's. How much does Silverplume cost?

Steve, They have recently changed the charges. It would be best to question them when you do the demo.Thanks,llp

Has anyone tried both FSC and Ez lynx?

FSC seems really nice.. but it's fairly pricey.

We are a CA based brokerage house and we have used both FSC and EZLynx. Currently we are working with EZLynx which is a big upgrade over FSC in my opinion. You will be limited to the amount of carriers you can get pricing on at this point compared to FSC but I found that with the 5 carriers I quote with I can find a carrier to beat the incumbent in both price and coverage so the other carriers pricing never comes into play. The real-time quoting system is where it is at however. Enter the info once and the client will be populated in each of the carriers website and a Realtime quote will come back to the submission page of EZLynx website. Very fast and accurate compared to the loaded rates that FSC uses. http://www.ezlynx.com

The business model for the traditional comparative rating vendors is undergoing significant change. The traditional process of a vendor calculating rates for multiple companies (called manufactured rates) and displaying them for agents no longer works primarily due to credit scoring. The new model takes application data from the agent (entered on a web site) and sends it (the magic) to the insurance company web site rating engine and lets it calculate the premium. I call this model "Premium Comparison" because the insurance company calculates the rate not the vendor. All the vendor does is move the data and displays the rate calculated by the company. The EZLynx and SilverPlume Rating products are examples of this process for personal lines. There are a couple of vendors doing the same process for small commercial.

FCS has a significant market share of the California comparative rating marketplace. Both EZLynx and SilverPlume have set their sites on CA and I think you will see them grow a lot in the near future. I recently visited the offices of both EZLynx and SilverPlume Rating to get an in-depth look at their product offerings. EZlynx only deals with companies via real-time data exchange. SilverPlume does have a combination of manufactured rates (the old model) and real-time access (the new model). FSC is also working on creating a Premium Comparison product but currently does not have as many real-time carriers as the other two.

The issue that both vendors are aggressively working on is "inventory." How many carriers can they connect with using the real-time process? The issue for agents is finding carriers they represent that work with one of these vendors. It may make sense to use both vendors if they each have two or three carriers an agency quotes with. The time saved by agency staff entering an application one time and receiving two or three bindable quotes justifies the vendor's monthly cost. It may justify multiple vendors if you want/need access to more company web sites.

Steve Anderson

EZLynx is why better then FSC, the customer service with FSC is horrible and they are expensive. The problem with EZlynx is they are limited to certain carriers. I think they have Allied, Safeco, Travelers and Hartford maybe more. They are adding, man its a slick platform. If your looking for the next generation look at them.

Man, I love the ability to review/learn and pose questions etc to people in the same Industry who are incurring the same issues. Go Insurance Journal!

sanddog1 wrote:EZLynx is why better then FSC, the customer service with FSC is horrible and they are expensive. The problem with EZlynx is they are limited to certain carriers. I think they have Allied, Safeco, Travelers and Hartford maybe more. They are adding, man its a slick platform. If your looking for the next generation look at them.

They're adding more every day, too. The day we went live with them, I wrote 2 auto policies in 15 minutes. Sanddog is right - it's a very slick system & well worth the money. We compared them to SetWrite and EZ Lynx was slightly lower. Whoever invented this one should be given a Sainthood.

I would like to respond to Steve Anderson's quote

The traditional process of a vendor calculating rates for multiple companies (called manufactured rates) and displaying them for agents no longer works primarily due to credit scoring.

This model has been changing for several years but it does work with credit scoring. We currently pull Realtime rates, we calculate rates, we calculate rates with credit/claims, and we produce Realtime rates. In our case, we let the agents have Realtime rating side by side with traditional comparative rates. We are the only comparative rating vendor where an agent can get a Realtime rate, a calcualated rate, and a company rate side by side.

Agents do not have to go to a separate site to pull credit and claims history. Agents run credit/claims internally as part of the quote and it is billed directly to the insurance company.

In many cases, agents upload directly into the carrier and work with the underwriter to get a policy issued.

So there is hope...unfortunately, we currently only work in the midwest. We have had requests from some of the vendors mentioned here to license our system to bring more rates into their system.

Mica Cooper
Aisus.com
PS. I would like to add, this is NOT like doing Realtime in an agency management system where you never get rates, but instead get links into a Company website. Every company is quoted with a rate or a reason why a rate was not given, even for realtime!

Remember that rating software packages, like management systems, all have thier strengths and weaknesses, but all are trying to do essentially the same thing - get an accurate, usable price on a risk from multiple markets with maximum reuse of data. The AMS product (formerly SETWrite, now SilverPlume PL Rating) gets the nod for integration (2-way with almost any management system you can name), inventory (over 600 carriers rates, the last I knew), use of third party data (ChoicePoint, MSB integration), and can also report on "quote behavior" - that is, who in the agency is quoting what carriers (and not others), and what company was the risk finally submitted to (if it's a "real-time" submission). BUT - it requires a little learning, and more data up front to pull back prices. EzLynx is gaining on inventory and requires significantly less data entry up front to start getting prices. BUT - EZLynx cannot send prospect data back to your management system, does not integrate reporting or third party data, and does not store any "carrier specific" data that is needed to get a price - so you'll end up sending data out of EZLynx as much as five, six times (depending on the carrier) to get prices for some markets.

The best thing to do is have an objective, disciplined process to "audition" each candidate, so as to not be at the mercy of a slick demo or put too much weight on the experience of others. What's "right" is what is the right choice for you. Bring in each for a demo, using your data and your management system, and then score them on those items above, weighting each (inventory, integration, 3rd party data, speed of data entry, cost, "fit" to your workflow, reports) to what's most important to your operations, get references of both new sales and long term users and talk to them, then make your choice. In my experience, (over 20 years of working in insurance technology) if your process is right - you'll find the right answer. Good luck!