Unigard Earns 2005 Award

For the third consecutive year, Washington-based Unigard Insurance Group has earned an Ease of Doing Business award, presented by Applied Systems and its user group, Applied Systems Client Network (ASCnet). The award recognizes Unigard’s ongoing efforts to advance agency-company interface in commercial and personal lines of business.

“Unigard is proud to align its efforts with Applied Systems and those in the industry who truly understand that it is the agent who serves the policyholder first,” said Arne Chatterton, Unigard vice president of field operations and marketing. “By adopting standards that allow the agent unrestricted access to company systems – like Unigard’s – Applied Systems and its users have paved their own road to success.”

Unigard was one of 16 companies commended in 2005 for initiatives that provide agents and brokers standardized workflows for managing multi-company insurance sales, service and renewals directly from within their agency management systems. Awards were recently presented at ASCnet’s 20th annual Technology, Education and Networking Conference.

Unigard provides its agents several batch and real-time systems to improve ease of doing business. These include a management system that allows agents to obtain billing inquiry, claims inquiry, loss runs and first notice of loss with the company without leaving the system.

“Agency-carrier interface, more than anything else, has delivered tremendous efficiencies to agency operations, in terms of both sales and service,” said Doug Johnson, executive vice president of interface services at Applied Systems. “We join ASCnet in identifying which companies are the easiest to do business with, as this directly translates to a more efficient agency.”

Unigard Insurance Group is a multi-line, property and casualty insurer that was established in 1901. It operates in the seven western states of Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah and Washington and maintains local branch offices throughout the region.