AscendantOne Inks Agreement with Preferred Mutual Insurance Co.

AscendantOne®, a unit of Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), has signed an agreement with Preferred Mutual Insurance Company (PMIC) to license AscendantOne’s comprehensive property/casualty suite of sales and service solutions.

PMIC will implement AscendantOne’s browser-based rate-quote-issuance, underwriting, policy-administration and account-management system. The AscendantOne system will allow PMIC to web-enable the company’s rating, underwriting and policy service processes while reportedly greatly reducing operating costs.

PMIC, a New Berlin, N.Y.-based property/casualty insurer, will initially deploy AscendantOne’s rating-underwriting and policy-management solutions with ISO’s prospective advisory loss costs, manual rules and policy forms for commercial automobile, commercial package policy (CPP) and Businessowners Program 2002 in New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

According to Bill Jardinella, vice president and chief information officer at PMIC, “AscendantOne’s web-addressable architecture complements PMIC’s strategic direction. AscendantOne has already brought to market its advanced business-enabling platform; and during our extensive, competitive evaluation process among rating and policy-management vendors, AscendantOne stood out for its financial stability and its ability to deliver already-validated ISO content.

“We’re also impressed by the solution’s flexibility in meeting our business needs and the system’s price-performance advantage over the long term, mainly because the AscendantOne toolset provides autonomy for our business users and brings greater efficiency to ongoing program maintenance,” Jardinella said.