Recognizing Excellence

Three years ago, New Haven-based Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency (CIRMA; $186 million in total assets) decided to automate its claims processing and integrate its core business systems. As part of that vision, the insurer implemented in September 2004 Valley Oak Systems' (San Ramon, Calif.) iVOS one-system claims management solution. Based on the business impact of the browser-based claims administration system, at the 78th Annual Education Conference & Business Show in Boston, the Insurance Accounting & Systems Association (IASA) awarded CIRMA and Valley Oak the IASA Technology Achievement Award.

Partly as a result of the new system, which went live in August 2005, "We've had a tremendous amount of success," says Bruce Wollschlager, EVP and COO of CIRMA. "Our expense ratio dropped from 40.2 percent to 13.6 percent."

According to Wollschlager, CIRMA partnered with Valley Oaks because iVOS complemented the carrier's way of doing business with customers, and allowed CIRMA to reengineer business processes to reduce reliance on legacy systems and embed best practices for claims handling. The iVos system, Wollschlager says, has allowed CIRMA to better track subrogation claims, resulting in increased recoveries of more than $600,000 this past year alone, and has facilitated the creation of a new Special Investigations Unit to prevent fraudulent claims. --M.W.