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Duck Creek Technologies Announces Partnership with Syntel

Alliance is first System Integrator partnership for Duck Creek.

BOLIVAR MO—May 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Duck Creek Technologies, Inc., a provider of innovative software and services for the insurance industry, announced today that it has signed a partnership agreement with Syntel, Inc., a global information technology services and Knowledge Process Outsourcing firm. Syntel is the first Preferred System Integrator (SI) Partner in Duck Creek’s new SI Partnership Program.

As a Preferred SI Partner, Syntel will provide integration services in conjunction with Duck Creek implementations. The Preferred SI Partner program is part of Duck Creek’s strategic direction – to build preferred relationships with world-class System Integrators, while strengthening the implementation model and enabling the scalability of Duck Creek products.

Duck Creek Announces Release of Product Studio

Product lifecycle management tool dramatically reduces the time to develop, maintain, and modify any line of business.

BOLIVAR MO—May 23, 2011 / PRNewswire / -- Duck Creek Technologies, Inc., a provider of innovative software and services for the insurance industry, continues to expand its portfolio of product definition tools with the release of EXAMPLE Product Studio™ (Product Studio), the core of a product development suite designed to improve efficiencies by giving insurance professionals control of all aspects of the insurance product development and maintenance process, freeing technical resources to focus on technical tasks.

Product Studio enables insurance product managers to model, manage, modify, and monitor their products in a collaborative manner. Working in tandem with Duck Creek’s powerful product definition tool, EXAMPLE Author®, Product Studio will more radically reduce the time, cost, and effort it takes to respond to market opportunities and changes. With product management, definition and configuration fueling the Duck Creek EXAMPLE Server® operating system, carriers can now have a fully operational, self documenting, product centric policy administration solution.

Duck Creek Technologies Continues Strong Market Pace

Growth continues for Duck Creek with record sales in first quarter.

BOLIVAR MO—April 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Duck Creek Technologies, Inc., a provider of innovative software and services for the insurance industry, continues to strengthen its position as a leader for next-generation property and casualty solutions, with seven sales in the first quarter of 2011.

The new customers represent diversity in markets served, company sizes, lines of business, and distribution channels. Duck Creek® continues to grow globally, signing new customers in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean, including Tier 1 customers signed in both the US and Canada.

Torus Insurance's ESCAPE Broker Portal Aspires to Industry Leadership

A unique combination of technology and state-of-the-art functionality distinguishes Torus' broker portal in the excess casualty business, the carrier asserts.

By Anthony O'Donnell, Insurance & Technology

March 25, 2011

The business and IT executives behind London-based Torus Insurance's new broker portal don't claim that any piece of the technology is unique; but they insist that its combination of functionality is unmatched in the industry. The carrier expects its ESCAPE (Excess Casualty Portal Entry) broker portal to effectively differentiate the carrier among select brokers that can take advantage of ESCAPE's functionality.

According to Tom Culp, Torus' VP of excess casualty, ESCAPE's features include a quick-quote capability that lets producers provide a preliminary price to their clients rapidly, avoiding the full underwriting process; live chat with underwriters, enabled through a co-browsing capability whereby underwriters can share the broker's screen in real time; the ability to display multiple limit options that spare brokers the need to reenter information multiple times for different limits; and immediate policy issuance upon the binding of risk, including the ability to download a PDF of the quote, binder and invoice -- a process that often takes weeks or months in the excess casualty business.

In developing ESCAPE, Torus sought to make a leap in the quality of broker portals, many of which were developed in the late '90s or early 2000s, used in the excess casualty business, relates Culp, who originated the concept along with Linc Trimble, Torus' SVP, head of excess casualty. "I make an analogy with cell phones, whose functionality and support aren't commensurate with the capabilities of today's iPhones," comments Culp. "We aimed to create a kind of iPhone of broker portals."

Torus spent just five months developing ESCAPE prior to a beta launch in October 2010 and went live with a final version of the portal on Nov. 1, 2010. Culp characterizes ESCAPE as "an underwriting, service and support system all in one," adding, "Everything built in and around it is to foster a faster, easier process than can be found elsewhere in the market today."

The portal was built leveraging the Duck Creek (Bolivar, Mo.) policy administration system and Microsoft .NET SQL Server 2008, according to Culp. The system uses Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to query the system with each question posed by users, and deploys chat functionality from New York-based LivePerson, he adds.

Torus CTO - North America Justin Manley says he approached the technical development of ESCAPE with an eye to usability. His IT team, he adds, worked up a screen flow as early as possible to share with Torus' distribution partners.

"We wanted to make sure that they were part of the process from the ground up," Manley stresses. He notes that he also brought in two consultants from Cognizant (Teaneck, N.J.) to study how long the new business process would take from beginning to end, through all the permutations of use.

A Face in the Crowd

The portal's design and workflow also incorporate visual cues indicating the status of a user's visit. In other industry systems, Manley contends, brokers can spend 12 minutes or longer before realizing that their risk would require a referral, potentially adding days to the process. Within ESCAPE, a cartoon figure nicknamed "Quotie" lets brokers know where they stand. "Studies show that people are drawn to faces," Manley notes.

And throughout the query process, ESCAPE constantly checks underwriting rules and notifies brokers whether they are "in the box" with regard to Torus' risk appetite, according to Culp. The system incorporates roughly 800 class codes, which Culp says is about twice what most systems handle.

System logic determines which questions to ask a broker, based on the type of form submitted, Manley relates. "If there's something we don't need to know, we don't ask it," he says. "You don't want to put things in front of users that they don't need."

ESCAPE has the ability to quote up to $10 million in limits, according to Culp, but whatever limit users choose, they automatically are supplied with the results of up to 10 other limit options, minimizing the time spent on re-quoting. "There's no need to come back into the system to get different prices," Culp says. "We give all the variations available on the quote at one time."

Currently about 87 percent of the business written through ESCAPE goes through without referral, Culp reports. But the insurer has built a referral team to expeditiously handle business that can't be processed straight through. "We haven't even built calendars into the system that say, 'I need it by this date,' " Culp notes. "When it comes to responding for referrals, it's just not an option for us to be outside the 24-hour window."

View the article on the Insurance & Technology website