In the fast-paced world of business, executives are aching for partners that understand their organization and business and that offer value far beyond the project price. Any organization can be a vendor, but only a select few can transcend the vendor label to help clients achieve their goals.

Client requirements

For Atlantic American Corp., Celsior has long been the technology partner, with a shared history that spans over a decade. In fact, Celsior has worked with Atlantic American longer than the 12 years that CIO John Dunbar has been with the organization. But Dunbar had also worked with Celsior at his previous organization, so he was familiar with their working style.

It has been a fruitful partnership over Dunbar’s tenure at the organization, with multiple custom-built applications, for the Bankers Fidelity subsidiary, that help agents perform their jobs more efficiently, create quotes, and extend coverage to groups and individual customers quicker.

“It is very much a partner relationship and has been for a long time,” Dunbar says. “A couple of their folks have spent time with us and vice versa. They know our business well now and are very responsive when we need to add resources or when we have a problem,” he adds.

Enrollment platforms for voluntary benefits

Bankers Fidelity, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Atlantic American Corp., is one of the nation’s premier providers of specialized life and supplemental health products focused on the senior market. Licensed in 46 states and the District of Columbia, Bankers Fidelity products include life insurance, senior health insurance products, family plans, retirement plans, supplemental health products, and payroll deduction products.

Bankers Fidelity is rated A (Excellent) by A.M. Best. Any software application for the insurance industry is complex, requiring not only the functionality that users demand, but also the flexibility to respond to different coverage conditions and varying regulations depending on the state. “We cannot buy off-the-shelf software because the configuration and customization needs of the insurance industry are intense,” Dunbar says.

Moving individual sales to electronic form

Another project is eApp, software to help brokers sell directly to individuals. The traditional method found a broker sitting in a prospect’s home, going over the options, and then filling out any forms manually before faxing them to Bankers Fidelity, which would have to re-enter the data into the policy system before the underwriting process could begin. Moving to an electronic form provides the broker with an instant quote, reduces the chance of errors in the application, eliminates the need for double-entry at the home office, and dramatically speeds up the quote-to-policy process.

Dunbar describes this project as a collaborative effort between Bankers Fidelity and Celsior. Organization enterprise architects and business analysts helped define the scope of work with Celsior providing input and advice on how to approach a project of such magnitude.

The organization operates in 46 states and the District of Columbia, so any solution had to be flexible enough to handle all the different state variations of applications across all of Bankers Fidelity’s product lines. eApp was rolled out state by state using an agile / iterative software development cycle to accommodate unique state requirements.

Instant quotes for group voluntary benefits

Bankers Fidelity has begun rolling out its latest software application, Instant Decision, which allows agents to get underwriting decisions immediately after completing a client’s application. The former process involved submitting the application to Bankers Fidelity and waiting for up to two days to receive a decision from Underwriting. That lag led to extra work for the agent and losing the sale if their client had moved on to another organization.

Now, the agent receives the approve / decline decision instantly. This is accomplished through multiple technologies that Celsior helped integrate.

“Extension of our IT team”

Bankers Fidelity has a dozen FTEs in IT, supplemented by Celsior for projects. When a big project such as eQuote kicks off, Celsior is involved from the beginning with the organization’s chief underwriter, chief marketing officer, business analysts, Dunbar, and other stakeholders.

“Celsior is an extension of our IT team,” Dunbar says. “We do not ask our stakeholders to hold Celsior accountable but to hold us accountable. That is a critical distinction that defines the close working relationship we enjoy with Celsior,” he adds.

Time and again, Dunbar mentions the partnership aspect that allows Bankers Fidelity to scale up and scale down more quickly than it could with onshore staffing resources. He also appreciates the industry knowledge and longevity of staff, some of whom have been working on Bankers Fidelity projects as long as Dunbar has been with the organization.

“We do not put IT projects out to bid anymore, because Celsior has never given us a reason to. They continue to be responsive to our needs,” Dunbar says.