Developer of advanced Underwriting Management Systems™ (UMS) that enable commercial insurance carriers to profit from better underwriting, FirstBest Systems®, Inc., has added major enhancements to its flagship product. These enhancements to the UMS make it easier for agents to collaborate with property and casualty (P&C) carriers by working seamlessly with agency management systems, while also integrating with carriers' predictive analytics solutions.

Without re-keying data, insurance agents are now able to upload submissions automatically from their agency management system to underwriters using UMS. UMS works with popular agency management systems such as those from AMS Services and Applied Systems, Inc. Submissions are faster and easier, agents and underwriters are more productive and efficient, carriers reduce costs with straight-through processing, and carriers can focus on building more loyal relationships with their agent/broker customers, as a result of using UMS.

UMS, in addition, now enables out-of-the-box integration with carriers' own solutions or packaged predictive analytics solutions, enabling underwriters to better match price to risk and lower loss ratios. For example, if a carrier is using a predictive analytics solution, the underwriter can invoke the predictive model directly from the UMS. The UMS will then execute the model and return the results either in numeric form or in graphical renderings. Without coding, providing the ability to rapidly react to market changes, the UMS has a built-in Configurator that allows carriers to create and change business rules on the fly.

A recent TowerGroup survey of insurance executives identified critical strategic initiatives that carriers will focus on in 2008. Topping the list was improving the ease of doing business with agents. Deploying predictive analytics was, in addition, among the top five strategic imperatives.