American Financial Group Chooses AscendantOne Property/Casualty Rating and Policy-Management System

January 1, 2011 / 4 min read

AFG to Integrate AscendantOne Solutions into Corporate IT Architecture

Nashua, N.H., August 11, 2003 — AscendantOne®, Inc., a unit of ISO, has signed a contract with American Financial Group, Inc. (AFG) to integrate AscendantOne's property/casualty solutions into AFG's Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). AFG's Information Technology Services (ITServices) Division creates business technology solutions for Great American Insurance Group, through which AFG is engaged in the insurance business.

Under the terms of the agreement, AscendantOne's browser-based rate, quote and policy-administration systems will be integrated with other SOA technology components to support Great American Insurance Group's insurance and information processing requirements. As an internal services provider, AFG IT Services Division will make AscendantOne's component-based architecture — including its rating and policy systems — available to Great American Insurance Group.

AFG IT Services chose AscendantOne's flexible, web services–driven solution suite to consolidate and accelerate its delivery of property/casualty sales and service functionality to Great American Insurance Group's business units. The AscendantOne rating system provides true web-based rating, quoting and rules-based underwriting for any property/casualty personal and commercial line. The policy system enables real-time policy service, including automated out-of-sequence endorsements, automated renewals and advanced workflow management for any distribution channel. The integration of AscendantOne's solution suite into AFG's component architecture is part of a drive to enhance and web-enable key technology infrastructures across AFG's diverse business units.

Carl Jaekel, Enterprise Architect, AFG ITServices said: "As we develop advanced, on-demand technology services in response to emerging business needs, it is imperative that we provide flexible and secure business-enhancing functionality to Great American Insurance Group's business units. AscendantOne's browser-based solutions mirror and complement our Services Oriented Architecture, enabling us to rapidly expand delivery of robust, scalable commercial automation on behalf of our business units at desired points of sales and service."

ITServices and AscendantOne have already begun the first phase of project initiatives, which include validation of bidirectional XML interfaces via message-queuing technology to:

address policy-inquiry requests;
process coverage-verification requests from Great American Insurance Group's claims module;
feed Great American Insurance Group's billing component with AscendantOne policy data for producing invoices; and
integrate AscendantOne transaction data with components of the Great American Insurance Group's system architecture, including policy details from both Great American Insurance Group's unique product offerings and AscendantOne's ISO product inventory.

"AscendantOne is pleased to have been selected by American Financial Group's IT Services Division as a complementary solution provider," said Chuck Boodro, President of AscendantOne. "We look forward to integrating our XML-driven rating and policy-management system as part of AFG's evolving property/casualty systems architecture. The flexibility of AscendantOne's network-based solutions will help AFG IT Services design seamless, real-time workflows for business constituents to write and service specialty programs for any distribution framework," Boodro added.

Through the operations of Great American Insurance Group, AFG is engaged primarily in property and casualty insurance businesses, focusing on specialized commercial products for businesses, and in the sale of retirement annuities, life and supplemental health insurance products.

About AscendantOne
AscendantOne®, a unit of ISO based in Nashua, N.H., features comprehensive, browser-based rate-quote-issuance, underwriting, policy and account-management capabilities, powered by ISO's advisory loss costs, manual rules and forms. Our scalable, XML-driven solutions complement existing IT infrastructures, delivering new, network-based economic value to insurers. With distinctive and leverage-able business technology supported by patent-pending change-management methodologies, AscendantOne facilitates efficient pricing and policy service for any commercial or personal line of business, and for all ISO, bureau, specialty and proprietary insurance programs. AscendantOne's best-of-breed web-services architecture enables highly collaborative and cost-effective new-business-to-renewal workflows — anytime, anywhere and for any property/casualty distributor or demand-chain participant.

About ISO
ISO is a leading source of information, products and services related to property and liability risk. For a broad spectrum of commercial and personal lines of insurance, ISO provides data, analytical and decision-support products; consulting; data processing; and technical, statistical and actuarial services. ISO field services include on-site rating and underwriting services and the evaluation of community loss-mitigation efforts. ISO's products help customers with sales and prospecting, underwriting, rating and quoting, customer management, policy administration, product development, claims administration and fraud detection. ISO's AIR Worldwide subsidiary provides technologies to assess and manage natural and man-made extreme-event risk. Through its ISO Claims Services, Inc. (iiX unit) and Intellicorp subsidiaries, ISO provides motor vehicle reports and criminal-records information and through its AscendantOne unit delivers rating, quoting and policy-administration solutions. In the United States and around the world, ISO serves insurers, reinsurers, agents, brokers, self-insureds, risk managers, insurance regulators and other government agencies.

All trademarks appearing in this news release are the property of their respective owners.

Release: Immediate

Contacts:
Giuseppe Barone / Erica Helton
MWW Group (for ISO)
201-507-9500
gbarone@mww.com / ehelton@mww.com

Massood Abolfazli
603-546-2432
mabolfazli@AscendantOne.com