ARA Insurance Implements Instec Business Intelligence to Improve Operations
Naperville, IL (PRWEB) June 10, 2015 -- When ARA Insurance (ARA) was looking for a better way to track earned premiums on demand and assess profitability across its business, it was only natural to seek out a solution that could extract and analyze the valuable data stored in its Quicksolver policy administration system.
ARA, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the American Rental Association, works exclusively with the rental industry to improve safety through rental-specific insurance and risk management tools that control losses, reduce claims and lower costs. The company recognized early on that in order to track and analyze the unique risks and safety issues of the industry, it would need to own its policy data. For this reason, ARA brought policy administration in-house over ten years ago with the purchase of Instec’s Quicksolver system.
For several years, ARA had received monthly earned premium reports from its carrier partner. Seeking to take a more proactive approach, the company decided to begin creating the needed reports in-house. ARA considered custom programming, but the cost and maintenance were prohibitive.
“As a provider that serves a non-profit association exclusively, it’s critical that we spot opportunities to improve our loss ratio or grow our business within the confines of the industry we serve. We needed a simple way for our senior management team to see patterns as they develop and respond quickly,” says Kathy Harris, ARA’s chief financial officer.
Having recognized the growing interest in Big Data, Instec has a range of options from which ARA was able to choose. These include a self-service tool for ad hoc queries, pre-built reports and charts, web-based scorecards and dashboards, and predictive analytics, all based on Instec’s integration hooks to business intelligence and analytics solutions from leading vendors such as Microsoft, SNL iPartners and Yodil.
With speed of deployment and the ability to customize as driving factors, ARA turned to Microsoft® Excel PowerPivot, a tool that required no new investment and whose basic functionality was already familiar. Fortunately for ARA, Instec offers staging tables and a star schema for PowerPivot making it very easy to extract and load data from Quicksolver.
“When we saw the PowerPivot integration demo from Instec, we knew this was the best fit for us. Although our users were familiar with Excel, there was a learning curve associated with the PowerPivot add-in, so we set up the solution in our test environment, and after a couple of months we were convinced that the solution would meet our needs,” said Harris.
ARA has been using the new business intelligence solution for several weeks now, and has seized the opportunity to produce reports independently, a change that senior managers expect will enable them to spot trends sooner, perfect appropriate rates, and bring even more value and better service to ARA member clients.
About Instec
Instec delivers best-of-breed rating and policy administration solutions to P&C commercial insurers, MGAs, MGUs, and the solution providers that serve them. Since 1982, Instec’s solutions have empowered insurers and general agents to get and keep their competitive edge, efficiently create highly specialized insurance products, go to market quickly, and scale with a minimal IT footprint. To learn more, visit http://www.instec-corp.com.
About ARA Insurance
ARA Insurance, located in Kansas City, MO, is the leading insurer of the American Rental Association (ARA), with members in construction and industrial, light construction, DIY, party, event and wedding rental businesses. The ARA formed ARA Insurance in the late 1970s when rental business owners couldn't find insurance options for their businesses. For nearly 40 years, ARA has worked with its customers to develop rental-specific coverages and improve industry safety by investing in risk management initiatives.
Samara Hamilton, Instec, http://www.instec-corp.com, 630-799-6455, [email protected]
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