AMS to Roll Out Quote-and-Issue Capability at Users’ Group Conference

Leading agency-management software maker AMS will announce that it has added quoting new business into the workflow of its year-old TransactNow Web bridge product at its 28th national users’ group conference this week in Indianapolis, according to a company executive.

“The message isn’t so much that we do quoting,” Hugh Anderson, AMS director of interface and integration, told Insurance Journal. “It’s that in a year we’ve taken [TransactNow] from inquiry to the full business model.”

One of agents’ many complaints about the technology they use everyday to do their jobs is that they are constantly being pushed out of their internal agency-management systems to proprietary carrier Web sites for everything from billing, claims and policy inquiries. While AMS and other providers have made progress in improving real-time capabilities in these areas, the ability to instantly quote and issue business from within the agency-management system would represent a real advancement, according to Anderson.

“We now have 35 carriers on board, almost all with the same capability,” Anderson said. “This is part of the TransactNow service product and it’s a complete, consistent workflow across carriers. It’s not like one transaction here, one transaction there. You don’t have to stop and think, ‘Who does what?’ We want agents to really consider this part of their standard workflow.”

So far, 2,600 agents have signed up for the TransactNow service according to Anderson. He expects the conference to push that figure to more than 3,000 soon. The quoting capability has been in place for some time, he said, but is will “really be played up at the conference.”

Editor’s Note: Look for an in-depth feature on the future of agency automation in the national section of IJ’s May 3 technology issue. Also keep an eye on this space for other developments at the AMS Users’ Group conference.

Topics Training Development