Motor Data Solutions Ltd Motor Insurance Database Services to Insurers, Brokers and Policyholders Summary of Services

Transcription

1 Motor Insurance Database Phase II 4 th EU Motor Insurance Directive Overview of MDS Motor Data Solutions Ltd Motor Insurance Database Services to Insurers, Brokers and Policyholders Summary of Services Version 1.0 July 2002 Please also refer to our main website at Change Control Issue Reason Date Sign Off 0.1 Draft 05/05/ Pre-final 13/05/ Revised 24/05/ Pre-final 28/06/ Issue to Web Site 05/07/02 Ian Witham 2002 Motor Data Solutions Ltd

2 Introduction Background Motor Data Solutions Ltd (MDS) specialises in the provision of services to the Industry in connection with the 4 th EU Motor Insurance Directive and its implementation as Phase II of the Motor Insurance Database. MDS was formed in October 2001 by two key members of the Motor Insurers Information Centre (MIIC) Programme Team who believed that the impact of the MID on the Commercial Motor Insurance market would require complementary non-governmental and decentralised solutions, provided by a private company operating without the constraints of an Industry body. We have been appointed by several Insurance companies to respond with a solution to the problem (presented by the need for each participating Insurer to set up its own helpdesk to deal with the numerous transactions which it is anticipated will be made by its Policyholders) of establishing a Fleets and Motor Trade customer service solution specifically for the 4 th Directive. Our approach, together with the detail of our website and documentation, envisages three stages of operation: A Communications Phase explaining the 4 th Directive to Policyholders and gathering information from them An Initial Phase, allowing Policyholders to gain access to the MID An Ongoing Phase, setting up new Policyholders, supporting existing Policyholders and managing the timely supply of data Credentials MDS has established supply relationships with many Insurers, insuring Fleet and Motor Trade vehicles, and is negotiating similar supply agreements with several brokers, acting on behalf of their policyholders. Since January 2002, we have visited and presented our services to insurers, brokers and policyholders and have listened (and taken note of) their feedback and comments. We believe we are thus uniquely qualified to talk with authority about the activities of these groups, as well as being extremely well versed in the regulatory requirements and industry overview of the MID and the 4 th Directive, and can contribute to not only the Initial and Ongoing Phases of the 4 th Directive roll-out, but can also help shape the messages delivered during the Communications Phase. We are based in Chelmsford, in Essex, and at our Customer Support Centre is in Bristol. At present, we employ 7 staff (2 principals, 2 customer service administrators, a receptionist, a financial controller and an IT specialist); all our product development and support is outsourced to other providers. Our services In view of the fundamental reliance upon IT which Phase II of the MID requires, and the inextricably close relationship between the MID provider s role as an information reseller and its role as a systems supplier to Phase II, MDS decided to develop its own data collection mechanism which can be deployed on behalf of Insurers, exactly as if it is owned and operated by each Insurer independently. MDS s vision of its success as a company is not to resell information but to provide fixed-price, highquality, 21 st century solutions to its customers. We explain below and can substantiate how we are implementing a solution for the Market that is low-risk, provides immediate business benefit as well as meeting the compliance regulations and provides all participants with a competitive offering in this market that is at least as good as any customised solutions. To do this, we have deployed a self-service web site, backed up with broker-supported customer data collection and, as a long-stop, a keyed-data service for those policyholders who are not able or willing to provide data via the Internet. This web site provides data to the MID as well as sending, to the participating Insurers claims operations, details of all the customers and their fleets. The latter allows Public Distribution Page 2 05/07/02

3 Insurers not only to gain invaluable market data but also allow them to implement the Motor Conference suggested policy wordings, requiring policyholders to submit their vehicle data direct, by checking, in the event of a claim, that the vehicle details are up to date. Our web service is called MIDAS (Motor Insurance Database Application System) and is available today for evaluation by Insurers, Brokers and Policyholders. Rationale We feel that it is unacceptable in the year 2002 for MDS s customers to have to call the helpdesk for the simplest of transactions. We have therefore made MIDAS a self-service system, with the customer only calling the helpdesk where help is truly required. That this is an industry trend is confirmed in a recent paper Service Metrics: Time for a Change published by the Gartner Group in January 2002, which stated; Forty percent of call volume will move to the Internet as consistent, less-complex problem types are solved via self-service at the Web site. Companies today not only have to deal with clients increasing demands for support and service, but they also have to do so over multiple channels. No matter how great your call center or help desk is if you re not offering support on the Web your customers are wondering why? Is there an intrinsic problem with this company? Don t they know how to help me on the Web? Why am I not offered the convenience of online support? Customers are increasingly seeking out self-service By consciously moving away from the centrally provided website, we will significantly reduce Policyholders, Brokers and Insurers total cost of ownership, enhance the customer experience of being an MDS user, enable broker support as a key sales and communication channel to the client, and provide the beneficial side-effect of rich management information at very low cost of acquisition. Solution Description Infrastructure MDS has deployed its MIDAS web service to collect information from Policyholders. It requires no software installation at any Policyholder site, nor dedicated dial-up lines or digital certificates. MIDAS is self-service, containing descriptions of what actions site users have to take either on the page that they are viewing, or in downloadable manuals and help documents. It is intuitive and offers benefits (in terms of basic vehicle data management) to encourage compliance by end users. The system has been built using Macromedia s Cold Fusion development system, which integrates seamlessly with other Macromedia products, such as Dreamweaver and Fireworks. Large scale Cold Fusion users include UPS, whose web site is used worldwide for tracking package deliveries. The Cold Fusion software runs on Microsoft s IIS web server, and integrates with Microsoft s SQL Server database server. In our implementation, the application software runs on one server, and the database on a separate server. Both are housed in a secure, BS7799 certified, web hosting environment, with triplicated Internet connections, dedicated 0.5Mb bandwidth, on-the-fly back up and secure duplicated firewall. We expect availability in the area of the five 9 s (99.999%), which exceeds any likely requirement from the MIIC. The data feed to the MID is jointly provided over a link to Experian s Nottingham data collection service. All vehicle information (and, for some insurers, policy information) is packaged by MIDAS in to files for transmission to the MID. Error and reject files are processed by MIDAS and presented, on screen, to policyholders (or to MDS s support team), rather than being ed in computer format to end users. All the software for MIDAS is written and supported by Sapphire Technologies Ltd, who have produced the MIIC s own internal support systems at Milton Keynes. Public Distribution Page 3 05/07/02

4 Key Features For the end user policyholder, especially the larger ones, MIDAS provides a multi-depot / multi-branch or HQ / Subsidiary service, where data is collected and aggregated from many sites and presented to the MID as a complete data package. Policyholders can also, where they maintain different classes of vehicle as different risks, allocate different policy numbers (and even different insurers) to the various risk classes. Implicit within the supply methods are the MIIC stipulated approaches Interactive, Compare and Amend, Unattended file Transfer, Attended file Transfer. For spreadsheet users, an upload facility which does not require the end user to save the file as a CSV format is provided. Brokers can use the Declaration facility to easily print out, or fax their manual policyholders with regular declarations for them to update. Where Brokers or end users have vehicle management systems already in place, such as Policymaster s Sirius, Trace Systems Trace Light, Nexus s Rentman or Control Tower or Tripoint s Prohire, MIDAS provides a simple interface to allow data to be exported from these systems directly in to MIDAS, and then on to the MID or to the Insurer. Designed as a 3-tier architecture, the Business Rules defined by MIIC (14 day delivery, foreign vehicles, named drivers etc.) operate by exception rather than having MDS key this information in, the Policyholder enters the data, leaving MDS only the job of accepting it, or rejecting it. Support MDS already operates a helpdesk for its current users, provided by the Bristol-based support organisation. Using their advanced call tracking software, incidents logged by the technical support desk can be passed over the Internet to any other interested party, such as MDS itself in the event that a call is not technical or requiring application support, but is to do with (for example) a claim or a commercial matter. We have considerable experience of Phase II of the MID, having provided the MIIC programme team with its key technical staff for almost 2 years. From the support system, calls created either in response to a phone call or in response to an , or logged directly by an end user, are all processed in to a set of Management Information for submission to participating insurers, breaking down call types, response times, issues types, call durations and other information. By making the system self-service, Insurers no longer have a requirement for a substantial helpdesk to do such basic actions as entering names, addresses, telephone numbers and passwords this data will all be entered and maintained by the end user. MDS s helpdesk, staffed with experts rather than script-driven, call centre operators, will therefore be able to concentrate on providing high-quality, application specific assistance to those end users who encounter a problem. Longer period to implement The immediate availability of the MIDAS system means that, once they have received their initial communication, an Insurers policyholders will be able to commence familiarising themselves with its interface, and start loading data. As the MIDAS website does not depend upon the MID, except for the final transmission of data for use by the Police and other Insurers, the Insurers policyholders will have from the end of July until the 20 th January (approximately 6 months) to connect and supply their vehicle data. By contrast, other web site approaches, where the management of policyholders has to go via the MID itself, means that users cannot start sending data until Insurers have finally loaded their policy information, which reduces this time period to an average of just 2 months! Public Distribution Page 4 05/07/02

5 A further benefit is that this decoupling of the two functions (of policyholder vehicle data collection and Insurer policy data supply) allows Insurers to conduct their testing without needing to take account of its policyholders detailed requirements. Should their own testing not finish as planned, or should there be other delays, outside of the market s control, the policyholder roll-out can continue without any interruption. Data entry While we recognise that most Insurers intentions will be to direct their policyholders towards the Internet as the sole means of data supply, it is extremely unlikely that all policyholders will either be able to, or be prepared to, supply data this way. We envisage that there will be a number who, if their brokers can t support them either, will be looking for a central data entry service to key data in to the MID. Using MIDAS internally, we can act on behalf of this type of Policyholder our charges are 100 payable by MDS for each Policyholder of this kind, plus 0.75 per vehicle entered, removed or amended. Enhanced End user support Our experience to date has also lead us to develop on-site consultancy services for larger policyholders this includes basic data collection, MID readiness audits, staff training and technical support for their IT providers. While we expect the majority of these larger companies to eventually move to provide their staff with a single method for keying vehicle information, based upon their existing in-house systems, we believe that the majority of off-the-shelf package providers will take some while to amend their systems to integrate seamlessly with MIDAS, and we recommend workaround (manual) solutions to allow them to provide data in the short term. The costs of visits and support for these organisations are charged at 750 per day involved in preparation, on-site visits, post-visit reporting and follow up. Provide data / MI As many Insurers do not currently have a complete and comprehensive centralised profile of most of their Fleet and Motor Trade policyholders, including essential details such as a contact name or contact telephone number, whatever solution is implemented needs to be able to capture that information and maintain it. Clearly, it is small step to then provide it in a suitable electronic format to the Insurance business areas. By making our own database available via XML to interrogation by Insurers, we can allow close coupling of their existing IT enabled business processes with this new source of data. Making the end user (i.e. the Policyholder or broker) the person who is responsible for maintaining the data also increases the likelihood that this information is more accurate and more relevant. Our data feed of vehicle information can be delivered in real time using XML or as a flat-file or any other format. Public Distribution Page 5 05/07/02