Vertafore unveils insurance software innovations
Vertafore acquires Kaplan Compliance Solutions

Brokers, of course, have increasingly turned to technology to help them do the job. And Vertafore's business has been growing long before Obamacare became law.

In business in one form or another for more than 40 years, Vertafore's products today are used by more than 20,000 insurance brokerages, carriers and agents in more than a dozen countries, although primarily in the United States. It has more than 1,200 employees and posted 2011 revenues of nearly $350 million.

As is the case with many software companies, Vertafore has been spending a lot of energy lately on getting its clients to think about cloud-based computing.

Bruce Winterburn, vice president of industry relations for Vertafore, recently blogged on the topic on the company website:

"For the 43,000 residents of Great Neck, N.Y., last October and November showed the value of having your business in the cloud in an urgent way when Hurricane Sandy struck. 

"Global Planning Corp, a full-service, family-owned agency that has served its community for over 42 years, was thrust into an urgent situation where they needed to be able to keep their insurance business moving to meet their clients' needs.

"Thanks to the agency's decision to leverage (Vertafore's) AMS360 Online, two days after the hurricane, when most of the city had no access to essentials like electricity, agency President Bruce A. Cohn was able to go to his mother-in-law's house and began working from his laptop and cell phone by accessing key client information through AMS360 Online.

"By the time their office reopened the following Tuesday, he had process over 95 claims.

"Being able to service clients in an emergency is one of the most invaluable reasons why a business will deploy cloud software."

It's also a great case study for selling Vertafore's cloud services, of course.

Not surprisingly, the company's latest research, conducted this summer, found that 77 percent of brokerages attributed their growth in 2012-13 to the use of technology.

"The results of our survey reflect the positive impact technology is having on the way agents and brokers prospect, conduct and retain business," Winterburn said. "As new regulations emerge and business processes change, agents have to adapt and evolve to meet the new demands of their clients."

In other words, PPACA has been good for business.

In fact, its BenefitPoint software is designed to update constantly to reflect the ever-changing landscape of government regulation and health care reform to ensure its users are compliant.

Tellye Hedrick, senior vice president of Kansas City, Mo.-based Lockton Co., is a fan.

"We experienced significant improvements by automating and simplifying our revenue posting and more accurately reporting commission revenue," Hedrick said.

How much more accurately?

"We are able to recover 2 to 4 percent of revenue that was originally allocated incorrectly to carriers," Hedrick said.

Looking ahead, Vertafore is exploring how best to integrate or allow brokers to work with the upcoming exchanges, enabling them to share information with exchanges.

Vertafore also is in the process of adding wellness program information into BenefitPoint.

"As wellness programs become more popular, brokers will need to track them," Rineck said. "We have over one million employers in our database. If you take all the brokers, those 12,000 users, you can benchmark against that big data pool, and if for example, you work with a law firm in San Francisco and want to find out what other law firms in California, or across the country are doing, you can do that."

That's a pitch that gets people's attention.