Vertafore Partners to Expand Cloud, Data, Mobile Offerings

Insurance software provider Vertafore announced three new partnerships to expand its end-to-end technology offerings for the cloud, data, and mobile spaces at its user conference, NetVU15, now taking place in Indianapolis through Saturday.

The company said the new partnerships are part of its continuing effort to “improve the connection between agencies and carriers” while also making customer interactions as “valuable and seamless as possible.”

One of the new partners, Birst, a major player in cloud business intelligence and analytics, will help agents and carriers develop more actional insights from their data. According to a recent Deloitte study, only 13 percent of carriers were confident in their ability to manage data. Vertafore’s partnership with Birst will enable agencies to interact with current customer data, apply analytics and identify cross-selling and retention opportunities.

Vertafore’s carrier customers will be able to gain insights on consumer demand for insurance policies and evaluate strategies for optimizing agent-to-customer relationships.

“Companies are asking for the ability to unify the centralized and decentralized data within their organizations,” said Brad Peters, Birst’s chief product officer. “Partnering with Vertafore further meets that demand.”

New partnerships with Mitek and Microsoft Surface are designed to help manage customers more efficiently.

Mitek is a San Diego-based company offering mobile imaging for transactions and identification. Mitek’s partnership is designed to give agents the ability to onboard and service customers more quickly and efficiently using a mobile device camera, particularly for auto insurance claims and processes.

Mitek’s patented mobile imaging technology will automatically capture images of vehicle and identity documents, extract relevant data and auto-fill information to reduce data re-entry and increase the accuracy of information as it moves from agent to carrier.

The Vertafore partnership with Microsoft is designed to expand tablet use with special discounts on the Surface Pro 3, HP, and Toshiba tablets. In a recent survey by Channel Harvest Research, agents expect a significant increase in tablet-based applications over smartphone apps, especially for sales presentations and training.

“We started using the Microsoft Surface Pro just as a test to see if it made a difference for our producers and account executives in the field, and, as expected, it became so popular that more than half our employees now have a Surface Pro 3,” said Brent Rineck, chief information officer at ABD Insurance & Financial Service. “They can touch the screen, zoom in on things, show presentations and run all their business applications from a smaller, easy-to-handle device.”

“The new capabilities that flow from these partnerships will enhance internal operations and interfacing with customers,” said Guy Weismantel, Vertafore’s vice president of marketing. “We’re not done, though.”

Last year the company created partnerships with Amazon Web Services, DocuSign and Salesforce.