KnowledgeCenter

As we enter the 4th quarter of 2009 KnowledgeCenter is going from strength to strength, in fact 2009 is proving to be a real milestone year for the company.

Following the MBO in July 2006 the corporate target was to be the premier supplier of Document Management and Business Process products in the London Insurance Market within three years. With more than 20 clients and over 5,000 seats deployed we believe we are very close to achieving that objective.

There have been a number of key achievements already this year that are augmenting and underpinning our growth;

On the Client front ;

• We have won seven (7) new clients this year with five signing contracts in the third quarter.
• We have signed our first International clients with companies in the US, Canada and Dubai
• Existing Clients have continued to grow their Client base, AJG increased their Regional Broker base from 50 to 300 and most importantly QBE announced their commitment to Kcenter by increasing their user base from 700 to 1,000. It is their intention that this base continues to grow over the next 18 months as Kcenter is rolled out across the group in the UK and Europe.

We have enhanced the product line by releasing extended functionality in existing products and continuing to develop and introduce new products;

• Kcenter has seen a steady release of extended functionality within both the DMS and Workflow elements of the product
• In May a major enhancements release of KC 1 View - our Microsoft Outlook Integration module - was made. This was extremely well received by our clients
• KC Process Manager has been developed and is presently undergoing release testing - it is scheduled for release in the 4th quarter of this year

Strategically as a Company we have successfully moved from primarily a products based organization to a solutions and products company with the introduction of new Insurance focussed business solutions;

• Following on from the release of KC Binder Manager and our ECF facility in 2008 our portfolio has been extended this year with the introduction of KC Coverholder - KC Coverholder is a portal based solution that allows Managing General Agents (MGAs) to place business by delegating their binding authority to a network of designated sub-coverholders. This product is continually being enhanced with the introduction of a Ratings Engine scheduled for the 4th quarter 2009.

Finally partnerships continue to be key to the growth plans of the company. The two most significant partnership signed so far this year are with Xceed - a consultancy who have traditionally focused on the Banking and Telecoms sectors but have moved successfully into insurance during 2009; and BenchStrength a US / Bermuda based organization with a long and successful track record in Insurance who will be KnowledgeCenters support partner in North America and Australasia.

KnowledgeCenter are very pleased to announce the release of their latest business solution for the London Insurance Market - KC Bordereau Capture.

KC Bordereau Capture eliminates a large overhead from the conduct of facility-based insurance business and helps remove the headache and frustration of handling variable data structures when processing business of this type.

So what was the problem that KC Borderau Capture was looking to address?

A facility is an agreement that is negotiated between a Managing General Agent (MGA) and a carrier – who is the ultimate underwriter of risk. Under a facility, the MGA can sign-up any insurance risks that meet pre-defined criteria. The MGA then appoints sub-coverholders (brokers) to sell this insurance to the general market. In traditional facilities business, each sub-coverholder must supply monthly or quarterly reports (Bordereau) of all new business signed, premiums collected, endorsements to existing risks, new claims raised and claims paid.

Handling the bordereau information supplied by this network of sub-coverholders has traditionally been a burdensome and largely manual task albeit many bordereau are now supplied in the form of spreadsheets attached to an e-mail. The problem was that no tool was readily available that would allow the data held in those spreadsheets to be validated and incorporated into the MGAs core business systems for financial management, risk management and reporting. This is precisely the problem that KC Bordereau Capture addresses.

KC Bordereau Capture allows the definition of bordereau templates. Each template describes the layout of a bordereau, the business rules that are to be used to establish the validity of the data it contains and the way in which that data maps into the core business system database.

When a bordereau arrives, a user simply has to identify what type of bordereau it is and which sub-coverholder it has been received from. KC Bordereau Capture then takes over;

Utilising the power of KnowledgeCenters own workflow product Kcenter business rules and processes are applied. The system automatically associates the bordereau with the correct template. Using the rules built into the template the system validates the data. If it is valid, the system will automatically load the data into the core business systems. If a totally valid bordereau is received, its processing is “straight through”. When problems are detected, the system refers the bordereau to a user, with full information about the problem or problems identified in the data received. The user can then either correct the situation or instruct the sub-coverholder to send in a new or revised bordereau.

Tim Rawson Operations Director of KnowledgeCenter said;

“Every MGA is currently spending a significant number of employee hours every month on manual bordereau handling. Apart from the sheer cost of this, the process is subject to inconsistent application of business rules and high levels of error in data transcription. Our aim when developing KC Bordereau Capture was to remove the inconsistencies, reduce the MGA’s workload, provide management control around the process and reduce the costs for all parties involved. Based upon the feedback received from companies throughout the market we believe we have achieved those goals”.