FirstBest Announces App Forms Reader and Dashboard Features

ORLANDO - FirstBest® Systems, Inc., developer of advanced Underwriting Management Systems™ (UMS) that enable property and casualty insurance carriers to profit from better underwriting, announced today at ACORD, that it will offer FirstBest Agent as a standalone solution in addition to FirstBest UMS. The FirstBest Agent solution provides carriers with all Agency-facing capabilities and enables a quicker path to market-driven ROI, as well as easy upgrade to the complete FirstBest Underwriting Management System. (Visit FirstBest at ACORD Booth #133. Request a demo.)

The FirstBest Agent portal provides pre-qualification capabilities, upload, submit-to-bind straight-through processing, real-time process visibility, and much more. In addition, the company also announced new FirstBest Agent features, including the FirstBest App Forms Reader, an automatic form image translator, which transforms an ACORD form PDF or image into XML and allows instant upload directly from the agent's desktop to the carrier, using nothing more than the ACORD form image. The FirstBest App Forms Reader will greatly speed processing and can even produce online bindable quotes in seconds.

"The FirstBest App Forms Reader feature is a great idea at the right moment. It will make our agents' jobs easier, saving time and money in today's fiercely competitive market," commented Paul Zamora, VP of Underwriting, ICW Group. "This feature will further automate the submission process without imposing changes to the way people work. It allows a single-click upload of image-based ACORD applications, addressing a major inefficiency in the sector. We expect this added service to agents will help further make ICW their carrier of choice for Workers' Compensation and other lines."

"In response to carrier requests, we have made the FirstBest Agent available as a standalone product," said Julian Pelenur, CTO and Founder of FirstBest. "While there is less collaboration within the submission and quote processes without the FirstBest Underwriter, this option will allow carriers to achieve faster ROI by implementing FirstBest Agent standalone, with the option to easily upgrade to the complete UMS with full underwriting and real-time collaboration functionality."

FirstBest UMS™ enables insurance companies to write more business and write better business. The solution combines FirstBest Agent, a rich agent portal for commercial lines carriers with its next-generation underwriting workstation. FirstBest Agent is a complete point-of-sale portal for both new business and renewals, with rich functionality including dynamic supplemental data, shared documents and attachments, notes, and email notifications. FirstBest Agent also provides complete rules support (market reservation/clearance, pre-qualification, risk appetite, risk eligibility, and agent authority quoting and binding rules) and is designed to be integrated with a carrier's rating system.

FirstBest Agent also includes a real-time Agent Dashboard for high-level metrics, detailed account activity and greater visibility into the book of business. The feature gives agents and brokers the flexibility to point-and-click to define and obtain metrics that matter the most for each type of user.

Additionally, FirstBest Agent now includes the industry's first commercial lines ACORD forms reader. The FirstBest App Forms Reader is a new alternative to traditional upload methods, providing many improvements:

-- Provider Independence -- Does not rely on intermediary networks, eliminating third-party contracts, transaction fees, and process inefficiencies.

-- Universal Sourcing -- Lets agents either upload or email their ACORD form submissions to FirstBest Agent, which accepts PDF-printed, scanned, faxed, or e-mailed sources.

-- No re-keying -- The system "Reads" the ACORD form and extracts the application data into ACORD XML, and then begins submission processing.

-- Auto Quotes and Referrals -- May immediately produce a bindable online quote or refer the submission to an underwriter (based on a carrier's FirstBest UMS configuration and underwriting policies).

ACORD standards provide a common framework for communication and allow different companies to transact business electronically with agents, brokers and other data partners in the insurance, reinsurance and related financial services industries.

About FirstBest

FirstBest® Systems, Inc. delivers advanced Underwriting Management Systems™ (UMS) that enable insurance companies to write more business and write better business. The FirstBest UMS™ combines a next-generation underwriting workstation with a rich agent portal for commercial lines carriers. Insurers can achieve greater speed and business agility, provide real-time collaboration to make it easy for agents to do business with them, promote enhanced underwriting discipline and best practices, scale their book of business profitably, and empower underwriters and agents with greater visibility into the business. FirstBest Agent is now offered as a stand-alone solution and provides carriers with all Agency-facing capabilities to enable a faster path to market-driven ROI, while enabling ease of doing business with agents.