Princeton Insurance Company, NJ, USA
ADVANCED INSURANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (AIMS) |
The Client
Princeton Insurance Company provides a wide range of coverage, including professional liability, general
liability, property and workers compensation for organizations and individuals in many states in the USA.
In September, 2000, Princeton Insurance was acquired by Medical Liability Mutual Insurance Company (MLMIC)
to become part of the nation's largest medical malpractice insurer. MLMIC is rated A (Excellent) by A.M. Best.
The Pre-existing System
Princeton Insurance has been serving hospitals since 1976 and individual medical and healthcare professionals
since 1982. They utilized a largely proprietary software application called ECHOS (Exposure Centric Home
Office System), which handled all aspects of processing, including:
- Policy Management: policy
issuance, renewal, endorsing, etc.
- Claims Processing
- Financial Management
- Risk Management
- Auditing Process
- Generation and Printing of Forms
The Challenge
Growing consolidation and changes in the regulatory framework have led many
insurers to add new products to their portfolios. This presents new challenges and opportunities in
leveraging their greatest asset – data. These changes, along with a number of other trends in the insurance
industry, have exponentially increased the importance of an effective business intelligence environment,
and the complexity of building such an environment.
Princeton committed to replace ECHOS with a new system that would leverage the benefits of internet.
Their objectives included the following:
- Design, develop and
deploy a system to serve the needs of Princeton
Insurance Company, its subsidiaries and its
customers
- Design the system to
serve data on to the web and integrate with web
site functionality
- Design the system in such
a way that it would be flexible and extensible
- Deliver a system which is
resilient, centrally managed and scaleable to
meet Princeton Insurance Company strategic
requirements
- Develop the system based on Microsoft Solutions Framework
The Solution
In close collaboration with Princeton Insurance Company, i3 developed and deployed Advanced Insurance
Management System (AIMS), an Intranet-based Enterprise-wide Information System, based on the Unified
Software Development process. The development process was incremental and iterative to ensure that
it met the requirements of the users.
AIMS supports the following key areas :
- Underwriting Policies to
Physicians, Dentists, Chiropractors,
Podiatrists, Small Businesses and Others
- General Liability
- Professional Liability
- Business Office Product
(BOP)
- Workers Compensation
- Agency & Marketing
Management
- Claims Management
- Finance Management
- Interface with AS/400
- Data warehousing/Reporting
The system was designed to integrate with third party applications including those provided by Princeton’s
partner Instec. To accommodate Princeton's expanding portfolio of insurance products and services and
growing customer base, AIMS was designed to scale gracefully and easily accommodate the integration of
new products.
The Tools
The following tools were used for the development of AIMS:
- Rational Rose Enterprise
Edition
- Erwin for Data Modeling
- HTML, VB, ASP, WFC,
ActiveX, MTS and the COM/DCOM model
- Outlook Mail, PDF, Word,
Excel and pre-existing fax server component
- SQL Server, Cognos, Power
Play and Crystal Reports
- Internet Information
Server and Windows 2000 operating system
- FTP, Virtual Private
Network and Internet
- Visual Source Safe for Version Control
The Benefits
- Reduced average time for
issuing a policy by 4 hours
- Reduced average time for
interacting with external agencies for writing a
policy by an hour, resulting in improved
productivity
- Increased the efficiency
of claims processing and improved customer
relations
- Eliminated costs
associated with maintaining and updating
software on employees’ PCs, due to new system’s
browser interface
- Served all constituents
with one complete Enterprise-wide solution built
on a 3-tier architecture
- Streamlined future
development: components developed for one
application can easily be shared by all other
applications with absolutely no additional
programming
- Web-enabled enterprise:
component architecture allows all desktop
functionality to be accessed on the web
- Guaranteed that all users
run the most current version of the software
because of browser interface
- Reduced downtime for the
system since users do not need to be logged out
to receive data updates
- Automated processes and
eliminated manual work by integrating FNS Claims
Reporting data and QRS medical audit data into
AIMS
- Provided querying ability
to a wide variety of users through sophisticated
Data Warehousing
- Enabled tight integration
with AS/400 for batch updates, real time updates
and reports, taking advantage of component-based
architecture
- Achieved time to market and budget requirements due in great part to onsite-offshore development model
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