Brovada introduces policy change XML upload, eliminates need for brokers to work through a company portal

Software provider Brovada has laid claim to being first out of the gate in North America for introducing a real-time policy change XML upload without the need for a broker to interact with a company portal.

Brovada gave a live demonstration of its new technology in Toronto on June 21.

“This is a big announcement for Brovada,” Brovada CEO Karl Greenlaw said at the demonstration. “As far as we are aware, this is the first policy change upload using web services in North America. What does that mean? It means that the brokers actually do have a once-and-done solution.”

Nine years in the making, the new, out-of-the box technology allows a broker to initiate an electronic policy change upload to the carrier without having to re-key the information into a company portal.

The solution is capable of accepting a broker policy change submission, validating the data and overriding company policy data without requiring any intervention by the company, said Michael Wright, senior vice president of operations at Brovada.

“It’s really up to the carrier how they want to implement that,” Wright said. “In addition to that, it’s capable of accepting the submission and providing the broker the opportunity to confirm the submission based on an apples-to-apples comparison of the data that they have in their BMS (broker management system), including the policy change, and the policy admin data coming out of the company system.”

Brovada’s solution essentially converts the broker’s policy change request and the carrier’s current policy of record into respective XML files. It then compares information in each of the XML files to verify broker and company data.

“For the carriers to whom we have spoken, a lot of them said they would feel much more comfortable in policy change transaction if their data in the policy administration system was actually verified against the data coming in from the broker prior to the data updating in their system,” Wright noted.

Once the data is verified, the broker policy change request can override the system of record without intervention by the carrier. The solution allows brokers and carriers to verify broker and carrier data using full policy images and not just images of the changes.

Currently, the Brovada solution is testing at 10 seconds to complete a policy change transaction. The system is designed to handle challenges associated with out of sequence and prior term policy transactions.

The solution can handle a variety of policy change transactions, including, among other things, adding or subtracting drivers, vehicles, physical locations and risk items, or modifying a policyholder’s information.

Thus far, SGI and Grenville Mutual Insurance Company have signed on to use the technology, Brovada reports. Another, unnamed insurer is now in the stage of doing acceptance testing of the new technology.