Canadian ICMIF member Halwell Mutual Insurance Company and Applied Systems^® have announced a partnership to enable real-time commercial lines quoting. The use of CSIO commercial lines data standards and question sets and Applied’s commercial quoting capabilities will ensure that Halwell’s coverage offering shows up at the point of quote and enables Hallwell’s broker partners to automate the quote process for their small business owners and independent contractors across Canada.

“Bringing the benefits of automation to the commercial lines insurance process is long overdue,” said Marg Torrance, President & Chief Executive Officer, Halwell Mutual Insurance Company. “We collaborated with Applied because we wanted to create a simpler, more standard workflow for our broker partners who are quoting coverage for their independent contractor clients. We will start by bringing this feature to our Contractor Package, and we look forward to introducing it to more of our commercial packages in the future.”

Another Canadian ICMIF member, Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company, also trades commercial lines business on Applied’s platform.

“We have been on a focused journey over the past 18+ months to solve the commercial lines challenge, bringing new technology and capabilities to market while partnering with the industry at large to standardise the opportunity,” said Steve Whitelaw, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Canada, Applied Systems.

“Our partnership with Halwell supports our growing panel of insurer partners to provide brokers efficient submission and quoting processes and market choice and enabling insurers the benefit of stronger submissions. Collectively this will allow for a better experience for business owners turning to the broker channel for their insurance needs,” Whitelaw concluded.

In collaboration with CSIO and insurer partners, Applied works to create an end-to-end commercial lines distribution solution. Applied’s standardised commercial workflows allow brokers to digitally submit a quote request directly from the application to multiple insurers and eliminate the need to re-key data into insurers’ portals. Insurers can then identify and streamline packages that are most suitable for quote-to-bind, enhancing response time on commercial quotes and increasing broker confidence in presenting commercial products to their customers.