Rural Computer Consultants
Rural Computer Consultants (RCC) specializes in developing applications for propane retailers and mutual insurance companies. Started in 1979 by the Sheehan brothers, Brian and Kevin, the company has continued to grow in the fuel and mutual insurance markets by selling their applications at the national and international levels.
RCC’s Mutual Insurance Processing System (MIPS) is a complete software/hardware package specifically built for the mutual insurance industry. MIPS includes policy issuance/printing, integrated rating with user maintainable rates, agent and/or direct billing, ACH and/or credit card processing, agent statement/reporting, unearned premium reporting, claims management, premium/loss ratio analysis, optional G/L and A/P, and much more.
RCC uses XML to electronically
process insurance policy premiums
Mutual insurance companies use MIPS
to manage their customers’ insurance
policies. On a daily basis, an insurance
company can run a menu option in
MIPS that determines which premiums
are due and what each customer’s
preferred payment method is, creates
XML files with this information,
and then sends the XML files to one
of two payment vendor Web services.
One vendor’s Web service handles
credit card payments, communicating
with the appropriate credit card
company, and obtaining verification
of the charges. The second vendor
handles ACH, or automatic bank account
withdrawal. The ACH vendor’s
Web service withdraws the appropriate
funds from the policyholder’s
bank account and deposits them into
the insurance company’s account.
If an account is rejected, the insurance
company is notified and can then
either re-bill the customer with
a new account or credit card number
or print the bill to mail.
“All of this occurs behind the scenes,” states Kevin Sheehan, Executive Vice-President of RCC. “All the insurance company has to do is receive the money.” The automation provides a number of benefits to both policyholder and insurance company. “It’s one less bill for the policyholder to worry about,” adds Sheehan. “Not to mention the time and money saved for both sides when you eliminate check writing and processing, the manual collecting and processing of premiums, and the revenue lost from late or lapsed notices.” The cost savings don’t end there. Prior to XML, insurance ISVs and their customers had to pay to use a proprietary data syntax from ACORD, a non-profit agency that develops and maintains various electronic standards for the insurance, reinsurance, and related financial services industries. With the advent of XML, this syntax is no longer required, eliminating this surcharge to insurance companies. Now the only fees paid to ACORD are by insurance company ISVs who rely on the agency to develop and support the industry’s standards for sharing data electronically. ACORD defines naming conventions and specifies what data needs to be captured and how to interpret it—enabling vendors to easily exchange information.
ACORD has recently released new standards for the farm insurance industry, and RCC plans to take advantage of this new market. “We will definitely use the Synergy XML API in this next phase of development,” states RCC’s Senior Synergy Developer, Brian Fagerstrom. Future development will also accommodate the reinsurance industry, which covers the insurance companies themselves. And RCC plans to incorporate XML into their propane application.
“XML really opens up our applications to a number of technologies and alliances,” concludes Sheehan. “The opportunities for communication are truly endless.”
For more information about AFS Technologies, visit their web site: www.rccbi.com
