CSAA Expands Steel Card Use

Building on a 2003 implementation, the California State Automobile Association of California has expanded its use of Steel Card's Web-based Apogee point-of-sale solution to support its full suite of insurance products.

The San Francisco-based carrier is adding homeowners, renters, condo/townhouse, personal umbrella and earthquake lines of business to the Apogee platform, which had already been supporting CSAA's preferred and specialty auto products, in addition to the AAA Membership product. CSAA also plans to add a dwelling fire product to the platform upon that product's release in the first quarter of the new year.

CSAA uses Apogee above its legacy systems to provide a better front end for its captive sales force. The objective of the solution, according to Bob Wilkes, business transformation officer, CSAA, is to provide a "single point of entry for all product lines, which our agents don't have now." Wilkes explains that, "If an agent is writing a homeowner's policy and wants to write an auto policy, he has to start all over again, and it's pretty much green screen, even for our agents."

The Apogee solution is integrated with CSAA.com's "2-Minute Quote," which is powered by Apogee's online customer quoting tools and was the carrier's initial Steel Card delivery item. Within the integrated Apogee environment, sales reps can efficiently manage and close leads generated through the Internet and other distribution channels, according to a Steel Card source. Using the point-of-sale solution, customers and sales reps can collaboratively review and modify quotes until the customer is satisfied and ready for the agent to collect payment and trigger policy issue.

Starting with the online 2-Minute Quote implementation, "our experience with Steel Card has been nothing but success," says Wilkes. "They have accomplished a lot; we went online with motorcycle [on Dec. 10] and nobody thought we'd be able to get that in until February. Steel Card is just part of our team."

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio