Leading MGA Modernizes Rating Operations with Automated, Version-Controlled Workflow
Company Background
This client is a leading managing general agency (MGA) in the United States, offering a diverse portfolio of insurance products across personal, commercial, and professional lines. Historically, the company relied on a VBA-heavy Excel Property Rater integrated with external systems such as Ping to process Schedule of Values (SoV) data and support catastrophe modeling. This tool was used to process and enrich various data types, facilitating rating and underwriting workflows.
While functional, the legacy system required significant manual intervention at multiple stages. These inefficiencies created workflow bottlenecks, limiting scalability, and impacted the company’s ability to respond to market opportunities. As the MGA expanded its market presence, these limitations became a pressing issue, prompting the need for a strategic transformation in rating operations.
Client Challenge
The outdated processes and fragmented systems created significant operational inefficiencies and hindered the MGA's growth potential:
VBA Dependencies: Reliance on VBA macros and manual workflows posed maintenance challenges and limited scalability.
Data Integration Bottlenecks: Manual integration of data from external systems such as Ping and AIR complicated workflows and slowed operations.
Complex Workflows: Managing policy changes and endorsements was unnecessarily complex due to fragmented systems, leading to slower turnaround times.
Our
Solution
Coherent delivered a modern, streamlined rating solution that transformed the MGA's operations.
At the core of the solution was a newly developed "user rater" that replaced the VBA-heavy system. This clean design separated inputs, outputs, and rating logic, simplifying workflows and eliminating dependencies on macros, all while maintaining essential business functions.
To future-proof the solution further, Coherent implemented a Traffic Director mechanism using Coherent Spark. This dynamic tool automatically routed ratings to the appropriate rater version based on specific policy and transaction inputs, ensuring accuracy and efficiency. Coherent also demonstrated the capabilities of Spark's XConnector to automate data fetching from external sources, removing the need for manual intervention and significantly reducing errors.
Beyond these immediate operational improvements, the Coherent solution provided a clear pathway for future API-based enhancements, delivering both quick wins and long-term strategic value.
The Results
Improved Workflow
The "user rater" simplifies underwriter workflows by separating inputs, outputs, and logic, reducing manual intervention and eliminating VBA dependencies.
Scalable Foundation
The solution supports advanced workflows and seamless integration with future technologies.
Dynamic Version Routing
Traffic Director facilitates dynamic version routing, ensuring the correct rater version is used for each policy or transaction based on specific inputs.
Faster Turnaround
Streamlined workflows enable underwriters to process policies and endorsements more quickly, enhancing response times.