
May 18, 2007
uSign Gives Carriers Increased Efficiency, Quality and Cost Reduction
Lake Buena Vista, FL - May 18, 2007 - eLynx, a portfolio company of American Capital Strategies Ltd. (NASDAQ: ACAS), and provider of the largest secure electronic document communications network for the financial services industry, announced today that its Web-based electronic signature service, uSign, has been enhanced specifically for insurance carriers. uSign delivers efficiencies and cost reductions that directly equate to a competitive edge for insurance clients.
Insurance leader Allianz Income Management Services (AIMS) used the eLynx electronic process to significantly reduce turn time for agent consent. By implementing an electronic process for appointed agents of the income annuity product, AIMS significantly improved accuracy and efficiency, which reduced cycle time and costs. AIMS is offering a new product to a new market and a faster and auditable consent process is key to capturing this new market. eLynx brought its in-depth electronic process expertise and broad vision of just how and where electronic signatures can best fit into the insurance document lifecycle to decrease costs and maximize benefits. "eLynx tools and insight in the application of electronic signatures helped AIMS take the first step toward realizing our vision of being a wireless, virtually paperless (but not people-less) company," said Andy Dulka AIMS CIO.
"Historically, capturing and tracking the consent of agents and brokers has been a convoluted paper-based process, for both carrier and agent alike," explains Robert Nilsson, eLynx vice president of marketing and market development. "By incorporating our uSign technology, AIMS has transformed agent consent into an entirely electronic process. No printing, no mailing, no data entry, nothing. Everything is transmitted electronically to AIMS."
For another major insurance carrier, uSign is conquering the problem of a highly mobile client base, in this case, commercial truck drivers. Always on the move, commercial truckers are very difficult to contact via regular mail. As a group, however, they are a particularly Internet-savvy demographic. Integrating uSign into its property and casualty policy issuance process allows the carrier to communicate electronically with a highly mobile client base, enabling the issuance and signing of policies to occur electronically, regardless of the truck driver’s physical location. The same benefits would carry through to insuring actively deployed military personnel or any other target market segment similarly on the move.
uSign is also being used by carriers issuing memorandums of insurance (MOI) to customers, enabling the applicant to electronically verify their application data over the Internet. This speeds processes, decreases costs and increases underwriting accuracy while decreasing NIGO (Not In Good Order) exceptions. Since uSign is a Web service, all of these benefits come with no substantial upfront investment or drain on IT resources, and work as smoothly with legacy systems as with innovative SOA platforms. All insurance implementations of uSign deliver increased quality assurance, enhanced security and fraud prevention capabilities.
"For the last few years, eLynx has been actively exploring the most effective means to bring uSign technology to the insurance industry," adds Nilsson. "We’ve been received extremely well. The truth is, our business case is being proven every day, all across the insurance industry. In fact, I’d invite any carrier looking to gain the uSign competitive advantage to come visit us and see our leading edge functionality in action."
About eLynx
eLynx, a portfolio company of American Capital Strategies Ltd. (NASDAQ: ACAS), provides the largest secure electronic document communications network for the financial services industry. Serving more than 500 financial institutions, including 17 of the top 20 mortgage lenders in the United States, the company's solutions enable businesses to capture and maintain data electronically throughout the document lifecycle, automating paper-intensive processes, improving workflow, reducing costs and ensuring compliance with evolving industry regulations. In 2006, eLynx services were used in more than 10 million financial transactions involving consumers, lenders and settlement agents.
eLynx was founded in 1994, and recently acquired SwiftView, Inc, a provider of electronic document viewing software and paperless document communications services. The company is headquartered in Cincinnati with additional operations, support, and research and development staff in Portland, Ore. For more information, please visit www.elynx.com.