View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/01/16/317426.htm
Online property/casualty insurance systems provider Bolt Solutions Inc. said it has been issued a patent for its “apparatus and methods” for facilitating compatibility between different computer systems and, particularly, to methods of data export and import between incompatible systems.
The announcement explained said that a number of industries, including the insurance industry, share the need for different parties to transfer information to one another, using disparate technology systems that lack a usable interface or connectivity. Also, and possibly more problematic, there is incompatibility between business rules, even when both parties support an agreed to data-transfer protocol. As a result, data must often be manually re-keyed, reformulated, re-validated, or manipulated in order to be processed by incompatible systems. The complexity, redundancy, and manual nature of the process mean that errors occur at multiple points, resulting in high costs and slow turnaround times, according to Bolt.
In the insurance industry this problem is amplified in a multi-carrier, multi-product quoting environment where data needs to be exchanged with multiple insurance carriers across many different distribution channels.
Bolt said Patent No. 8,584,139 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was issued in late in 2013.
Bolt, a unit of cloud computing company ICG, said the patent also addresses incompatibilities between the insurance industry data standard (ACORD XML) and a carrier’s internal processes and systems.
The Bolt Platform uses this technology to provide an online marketplace for P/C insurance. It also was involved in the new Florida Citizens Clearinghouse.
Ari Katz, President and Chief Architect of Bolt, said.”We are happy to add one more patent to our portfolio that demonstrates our commitment to our clients and to innovation in the distribution of insurance, particularly in the online space. As a technology company with a large research and development arm, patents like these help us to maintain our leadership position in the online insurance marketplace.”
Bolt Solutions is headquartered in New York N.Y. and founded in 2000. It was formerly SeaPass Solutions Inc.