Quote Engine - Computer Guru's Needed

salpro22 · 12-18-2007, 08:02 PM

What has stopped somebody from putting together a software product in house that shows quotes for health insurance companies?

We all know that Quotit and Norvax are heavily marketed on the Internet, but it shocks me that nobody has thought to (or gotten permission) to design a software package that agents can download and use on their own computer that quote ALL RATES for the companies in their respective market.

I'm not a computer expert so I don't know what the programming issues would be, but with most of the rates available either on the desktop (Assurant, GR, etc.) and with rate sheets (some BCBS companies, Aetna, etc,) you would think that it wouldn't be that difficult to design a software to quote everything.

Thoughts?

-J.R.

TXINSURANCE · 12-18-2007, 08:18 PM

What has stopped somebody from putting together a software product in house that shows quotes for health insurance companies?

We all know that Quotit and Norvax are heavily marketed on the Internet, but it shocks me that nobody has thought to (or gotten permission) to design a software package that agents can download and use on their own computer that quote ALL RATES for the companies in their respective market.

I'm not a computer expert so I don't know what the programming issues would be, but with most of the rates available either on the desktop (Assurant, GR, etc.) and with rate sheets (some BCBS companies, Aetna, etc,) you would think that it wouldn't be that difficult to design a software to quote everything.

Thoughts?

It is extremely difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

Compliance per a carrier request on wording, logos, takes a lot of effort. Rate updates are very time consuming, these rates change very often in multi state, multi carrier, plan type - this is surely the #1 time consumer. Carrier rates might come via file or via a big book - somehow this data needs to be updated to YOUR system you built, hugely time consuming and expensive.

I would also question how big the agent market is in terms of revenue on strictly the quote engine. This is why Norvax and Quotit are both in the lead business - which is far more profitable (larger market anyhow).

You would be surprised how many agents won't pay $50 to $100 for Quotit or Norvax (or whatever they charge these days). The P&C guy that writes an Assurant on occasion or GR isn't going to bother setting up Norvax if he is not an "e-agent"

I think the quote engines are a great step to other products like web sites, hosting, and obviously leads.

The quote engine itself on a stand alone model is very difficult due to the build out and high maintenance of rates as well as high maintenance of agents (everyone wants something different), and low agent retention.

We had a lead management system, when I owned a lead company years ago - agents are a rough crowd to please , retention is terrible and maintenance is extremely high.

Not saying it can't be done - but if it were such an attractive model there would be 20 major players , not 2. There are a lot of bored programmers out there - I am sure this model has been looked at extensively by many (myself included).

salpro22 · 12-18-2007, 10:10 PM

Compliance per a carrier request on wording, logos, takes a lot of effort. Rate updates are very time consuming, these rates change very often in multi state, multi carrier, plan type - this is surely the #1 time consumer. Carrier rates might come via file or via a big book - somehow this data needs to be updated to YOUR system you built, hugely time consuming and expensive.

If you're dealing with multi states I see your point. Getting through the red tape would be quite consuming. Since I don't know how to design software I cannot speculate how much time would be needed to update software, as well as the cost.

I'm not talking about marketing this to agents. I am only concerned with getting this software myself and was hoping somebody on the forum could give me some advice as to the possible platforms, costs, setbacks, etc.

You have clearly illuminated some things I did not think about and I thank you for the information.

TXINSURANCE · 12-19-2007, 12:32 AM

I'm not talking about marketing this to agents. I am only concerned with getting this software myself and was hoping somebody on the forum could give me some advice as to the possible platforms, costs, setbacks, etc.

Yes it is a good thought - I have thought this many times but for the $50 to $100 Norvax / Quotit charges it is a steal for what you are getting.

Neither service is perfect by any means, but updates are included - dollar for dollar it is a good deal...

Besides...

$100 is only around 10 uninsurable morbidly obese leads, or a whole month of quoting service... lol...

salpro22 · 12-19-2007, 01:00 AM

Originally Posted by TXINSURANCE

Yes it is a good thought - I have thought this many times but for the $50 to $100 Norvax / Quotit charges it is a steal for what you are getting.

Neither service is perfect by any means, but updates are included - dollar for dollar it is a good deal...

Besides...

$100 is only around 10 uninsurable morbidly obese leads, or a whole month of quoting service... lol...

Valid points. I agree that either of those platforms are good for the typical agent, but I have something else in mind.

arnguy · 12-19-2007, 12:15 PM

J.R., if I were you I would ask Al to explain the process to me here on the forum in 100 words or less!

Newby · 12-20-2007, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by salpro22

What has stopped somebody from putting together a software product in house that shows quotes for health insurance companies?

We all know that Quotit and Norvax are heavily marketed on the Internet, but it shocks me that nobody has thought to (or gotten permission) to design a software package that agents can download and use on their own computer that quote ALL RATES for the companies in their respective market.

I'm not a computer expert so I don't know what the programming issues would be, but with most of the rates available either on the desktop (Assurant, GR, etc.) and with rate sheets (some BCBS companies, Aetna, etc,) you would think that it wouldn't be that difficult to design a software to quote everything.

Thoughts?

-J.R.

I don't know anything about health insurance or computer programing...but I do know this...sometimes things are simpler than people think.

Back around 2001 I wondered how hard it would be to make a program for the Palm Pilot to calculate rates for pre-need insurance. I inquired around my main carrier at that time Fortis/Assurant and they basically said it would be a big hairy messed up deal that would involve numerous geniuses and lots and lots of money.

Now these quotes are fairly simple. We just take their age and funeral amount and multiply that by a factor (varies by their age) to come up with the amount of insurance to quote (face amount of the policy) and then multiply that amount by the insurance factor for their age to get the payment quote.

I had my wife build a spreadsheet to do this in excel which had all the calculations hidden and the agent would only see what he needed to see and could only alter the fields for age and funeral amount. I then put it on the palm pilots using Documents to Go and it worked perfectly. I distributed it to about 150 agents across 3-states and it took off like wildfire. They loved it and it was much more accurate and fast than pen and paper and rate cards.

Fortis got wind of it and at first told me we couldn't use it. My answer was "How would you ever know?" About a year later Fortis had me come to their Atlanta offices to meet with their programmers. They started working on a more complex version and wanted my input. I helped them with a couple of ideas but I'm no programer.

When they brought theirs out, it looked good, it was 10-times slower to use and only gave one calculation at a time. Mine told the payment for a 3-year, 5-year, or 10-year payment all instantly. Their's had to be one at a time. The people who had already been using my simple version didn't even switch over to Fortis's "official" version.

Moral of this story is, we actually know what we want. That's worth a lot. Sometimes these things are overbuilt. And programmers don't understand that simple is usually better. And what you're looking for MAY not be all that complicated.

Go for it!

arnguy · 12-20-2007, 12:46 PM

Com'on Al, we need your erudite input here even if we can't understand it!

djs · 12-20-2007, 02:35 PM

The problem is, I can get this from Quotit for $89 a month. I can have something designed to do it, built specifically for my market, and my carriers, but it's going to cost a lot more than $89 * 3 years. In addition, I'd have to pay someone to keep it up to date, deal with any issues of quotes being wrong, deal with layout concerns, etc.

So the only practical way to do this is to get 50 or 60 agents together, share the cost, hope we all sell to basically the same market, and suddenly, you find out there are several similar products. Word and Brown does one that they are pushing heavily, along with several other GA's. They are not public internet (i.e., the general public doesn't have access) so they don't get the exposure, but they are there.

The issues with all of these types of systems are:
- Output display. Make sure you know what you want the output to be. Computer display only? PDF creation? Email quote? This will take a lot of development time.
- Data storage. Do you want to capture the data used on the quote for use later? Or just develop the quote and be done with it?

Developing the quote engine itself probably isn't that hard. Heck, you could probably do it in excel. Keeping everything up to date, and creating the printouts for clients would take a bit more. If you want it to have a web presence, then it would be a lot more.

Dan

GreenSky · 12-20-2007, 03:43 PM

I use Zapquote in California but I know it's a full time job keeping it updated for the owner.

Rick

al3 · 12-21-2007, 02:29 AM

Originally Posted by arnguy

Com'on Al, we need your erudite input here even if we can't understand it!

A quote engine is pretty simple database application. At its basic level all you need is a table that looks like:

Carrier_Name
Product_Name
Product_State
Age_Band_Start
Age_Band_End
Type (S=Single, F=Family, etc.)
Rate

The front-end screen accepts the search Input (In_) parms and turns them in to an SQL query such as:

Select * from Master_Table where In_Age between Abe_Band_Start and Age_Band_End and In-Type = Type and In_State = Product_State

The output would be a list of carriers, products, and rates.

Anyone with some proficiency in Access could put up a bare-bones system in a day or two, perhaps less.

The hard part is populating the master table and keeping it updated. Add to that the data for every state and you are looking at a lot of work... but once you have it input, since rates don't change more than once or twice a year, if you had the time or the staff, it would not be a huge task.

I'm not sure this answers your question. There are several quote engines on the market now. What is the purpose of creating another one? I don't see a quote engine as a big money-maker... and I guess no one else does either... or there would be a ton of them out there?

Al

2112Greg · 12-21-2007, 02:43 AM

Geez, just spend the 80 bucks a month on Norvax...!

No need to recreate this wheel...