Power Broker offers e-mail and policy upload and download capabilities to allow the insurance broker and the Insurance Companies to communicate electronically.  This communication is referred to as Electronic Data Interface or EDI for short.

Before you can begin EDI, the following items must be addressed -

Purchase the EDI module from Zycomp Systems Limited
Install and configure a modem or a VPN connection on a single workstation
Install, configure and test the MasterCom Broker EDI/PC software (the MasterCom software is included with your EDI software purchase)
Configure the CSIO Insurance Company Table, E-mail Recipient Table and complete the EDI section in the Define Your Company Information option (See Appendix A and B)

Sending and receiving electronic data is a simple three-step process of -
Creating the E-Mail or Policy Change Message or Policy to be Uploaded
Performing the Send and Receive Function
Review and Process the Incoming E-Mail Messages and Policy Download

In your office, users will throughout the day create e-mail messages and policies to be uploaded. These items are stored in an outgoing mail box awaiting delivery.  At any time during the day, the person who has the VPN or modem connection to CSIONet established on their workstation, would perform the Send and Receive E-mail / Policies function.  This function will send all the e-mail and new business upload that is stored in the outgoing box to the Insurance Companies, and it would also receive all the incoming e-mail and download and place them in the incoming e-mail database for review.

CSIONet is the Canadian Insurance Industry’s private intranet that is used exclusively for the transmission of Insurance data between Insurance Industry trading partners.   A CSIONet mailbox must be purchased on a monthly basis from the CSIO in order to be able to use the Canadian Insurance Industry’s EDI functions.  The public InterNet is not used for this purpose. 
 

The majority of e-mail messages sent to Insurance Companies are Policy Change Forms.  To create a policy change form, you must be in one of the Policy Screen sections.  Shown below is the Automobile Forms Menu.   Policy Change Forms 1 through 7 may be sent electronically to the Insurance Company by way of CSIONet EDI.

The following screen is a sample of the Address Change Form



Once you have completed the form, the following dialog box appears.



Enter <E> to e-mail the policy change form. If you wish to save the form to the customers file, then you should select <Y> in the 'Save Memo to Customer's File?'



Next, you will be asked to 'Enter E-Mail Company Code' it should be the same as the Insurer Code, but if you do not know the code, then a pop-up box will appear, and you will be able to select a correct entry.

Next, another dialogue box will appear, requesting the name of the recipient of the e-mail.  You must enter the E-mail User ID, E-mail user's first name, and E-mail user's last name. This information can be obtained from the Insurance Company, who will supply you with a listing of the CSIONet ID’s of their employees.  If you are unsure of the Company E-mail User ID, press the <ENTER> key on the keyboard and a pop-up box will appear listing the e-mail user ID’s for that Insurance Company.  The E-Mail user ID's are in your E-Mail Recipient Table from the Tables Menu.



Creating the e-mail message is now complete.  When the printer dialogue box appears, choose cancel if a hardcopy is not required.

 Note: The designated user who has the VPN connection or modem installed on their workstation should only perform this option. The sending and receiving of e-mail / policies need only be done once a day, but may be done as many times as required throughout the day, dependant on the volume of transactions processed in your office.  If there is no out-going mail, you should still proceed with this option, as you will want to pick up any incoming e-mail.

From the 'Home Page' main menu, select the EDI icon, in the EDI system function menu, select the 'Send and Receive Email / Policies' option

Once you are in 'Send and Receive Email / Policies' Option, you will see a browse window with all the outgoing e-mail messages and policies.  At this point you could edit and/or delete any email messages or outgoing policies before you proceed with sending.



To start, select the <Proceed> button on the bottom of the screen. Power Broker will launch the MasterCom Broker EDI/PC software, which will connect to the CSIONet network, and send all outgoing e-mail messages and policies, at the same time it will also receive any incoming e-mail messages and policies.



Once the exchange of information is complete you will be returned to Power Broker, and placed in the 'Review Incoming E-Mail" section.
 

From the 'Home Page' main menu, select the EDI icon, in the EDI system function menu, select the 'Review Incoming E-Mail Items' option

Once you are in 'Review Incoming E-Mail' Option, you will see a browse window with all the received e-mail messages.  At this point you could print the eMAIL, save the mail to a customers file, edit the message, re-send the message or the edited message to any user listed in the eMAIL recipient table or delete the message.

Note that you may print a number of eMAIL messages all at once by tagging each that you wish to print with a <Y> in the Print column, and then pressing the <Print> button at the bottom of the screen.

Similarly, you may tag all of the eMAIL messages that you wish to delete with a <Y> in the Delete column, and then press the <Delete> button at the bottom of the screen.



  This option allows the user to print the e-mail message

  This option allows you to save the e-mail message to a customer's Abeyance/Docs file. The Save dialog box will prompt for customer code, abeyance date, policy number, producer code, if the item is completed (Y/N), and a description.



  This option allows the user to edit an e-mail message (Replying to the message, Making Notes or Comments, etc.…). The user could then Re-Send / Save / Print the message.

  This option allows the user to re-send an existing e-mail message that is currently in the 'Incoming E-mail' message box. The user is first prompted for the Insurance Company Code. Then is prompted for the e-mail recipient information.

  This option allows the use to delete an e-mail message, it is usually done after the message has been reviewed, printed, saved or re-sent.

  This option allows the use to delete an e-mail message, it is usually done after the message has been reviewed, printed, saved or re-sent.

  This option returns the user to the main menu.

 

Please refer to the Help Sections within the Power Broker software screens for a more detailed description of these processes.

MasterCom downloads your daily policies from your CSIONet mailbox and places them in the MasterCom eMAIL folder on your File Server.  The policies sit in that spot until you proceed to the EDI Menu and run the ‘Reformat Latest CSIO Download’ option.  If you run the ‘Send and Receive EMAIL / Policies’ several times in a row, without running the ‘Reformat Latest CSIO Download’, the number of incoming download policies will just continue to build up in the MaterCom eMAIL folder.



The reformatting process takes the download policy information, which is in the CSIO Standards data format, and converts the data to Power Broker Foxpro databases format, and stores these policies in databases in the  AD  directory, where they sit until you merge them into your active databases.  You may reformat the CSIO policy download many times in a row without merging and there will be no impact other than increasing the number of policies awaiting merge in these download FoxPro databases in the AD directory.  It is best though to do the reformat and the merge, immediately after doing the Send and Receive.

The Merge Daily Automobile Policies and Merge Daily Habitational Policies options are located on the EDI Menu, right below the Reformat Latest CSIO Download option.



Please refer to the Online Help within Power Broker for a more detailed description of the Merge Daily Download function and the rest of the functions located on the EDI Menu.

Power Broker allows for uploading brand new policies that fall under the Automobile and Habitational policy sections of the system.  Currently the Canadian Insurance Industry does not accept Policy Change or Cancellation uploads from Broker Management Systems.

If you will be uploading new business to the Insurance Companies through EDI and CSIONet, then contact each Insurance Company that you will be uploading with.  The Insurance Companies typically publish detailed instructions on the requirements of new business upload and how to do it with your Broker Management System.

Here we will just provide a brief overview of the steps involved in uploading new business.

1.      Enter the basic details on the main customer screen.

2.      Complete the main policy screen, giving the policy the next available binder number and entering all of the basic details such as customer code and name, effective and expiry dates, producer and csr codes, your province code, etc.

3.      Create an Application for Automobile Insurance or Application for Habitational Insurance and fill out the Application as thoroughly as possible.  Ensure that you use the appropriate application for your province.

4.      For Automobile Insurance, when the Application is completed, you will be asked to save the application details into the policy.  You must do this and this will fill out the various Vehicle, Driver, Coverage and Conviction screens on the policy.  For Habitational Insurance, once you have completed the application details, you must proceed into the policy and add the basic Property, Underwriting and Coverage’s details, and if applicable you may add scheduled articles, watercraft, motors, trailers, etc.   Please note that Power Broker does not have any limitations.  You may have any number of vehicles or drivers on a policy, or any number of property locations.  If there are more than 4 vehicles or 4 drivers on a policy, you need only enter a second Application for Insurance against the policy, indicating that it is a secondary application where you are itemizing vehicles or drivers 5 through 8, or 9 through 12, etc.

5.      The actual upload occurs primarily from the Policy Screens themselves garnishing the data from the Vehicle, Driver, Coverage, Property, Watercraft, etc. screens, however there is quite a bit of information that is contained only on the Application and not on the Policy Screens, therefore it is always necessary to complete the Application first and then move the data from the Application into the Policy.  Click on the <Upload> button found in the Policy Option Bar, when you are ready to send this new business policy into the Upload Policies Batch.

When you click on <Upload> the system will check the currently displayed policy and it’s supporting application f for completeness of information, and report back to you if any mandatory information data fields have not been completed.  Power Broker will only accept a new business policy for upload, if all of the mandatory data fields have been completed.  This makes the Insurance Companies happy, because new business policy upload coming to them from Power Broker broker offices tend to be quite high in data quality and error free, thereby passing through the Insurance Company edit checks with high frequency.

You may now return to the various policy and application screens and fill in the missing details and then click on the <Upload> button again to determine if the new business policy upload will pass the edit checks.

All of the policy uploads that are done throughout your office are pooling up waiting to be transmitted to the Insurance Companies.  At some point or points in the day you will need to proceed to the EDI Menu and run the  ‘Send and Receive EMAIL / Policies’ option to transmit these policies through CSIONet to the Insurance Companies.

Appendix A

 

From the 'Home Page' main menu, select the Tables icon and double click on 'CSIO Insurance Companies' in the Functions section.

There should already be CSIO insurance companies listed in the table. You will need to complete the additional information in the screen for each company that you will be doing EDI with.  Additionally, it may be necessary from time to time to add another Insurance Company into this Table as more and more Insurance Companies go online with EDI and CSIONet.

CSIO Company Code:          The code assigned by the CSIO. (See below)

Company Name:                    The insurance company name.

Machine Address:                 The address is also assigned by the CSIO. (See below)

Contract Number:                 Your primary brokerage contact number with the insurance company. Contact your marketing rep if you need this information.

Multiple Contracts:               If your brokerage has multiple contacts with the same insurance company, a <Y> will allow the user who is creating the e-mail message to specify a contract number.

User Password:                    This field is used by a few insurers and will already contain a password if the insurance company requires a password.

Auto Upload/Hab Upload:    Enter a <Y> if you are uploading automobile and/or habitational policies to this insurer.

Create Download Charges:             Enter a <Y> if you want Power Broker to create the Agency and Direct bill accounting transactions, whenever you download and merge policies from this Insurance Company.  Therefore, it is possible to have the creation of accounting transactions in place with the download from some Insurance Companies, but not others.

Base Download Charges on 5CHG Group:

                                                This pertains only to Quebec at this time and would only be enabled for Insurance Companies that download the 5CHG Group.  The 5CHG group supplies the commission information to the policy transaction.  Examples of Insurance Companies that download the 5CHG record are AXA Assurance and ING Groupe Commerce.

CSIO Code #2:                      Enter a period (.) and press the <enter> key on the keyboard.            Select the insurance company.  You must fill this field in.

Transmission Method:         Choose the communications network your insurance company is using.  CSIONet is the primary method.

CSIO Insurance Company Information:

Here is a current list of the Insurance Companies that perform EDI in Canada and their IBM Machine Addresses.  This list is as of May, 2005.

From the 'Home Page' main menu, select the Tables icon and double click on 'E-Mail Recipients'  option on the Functions section.

Use the Add record box in the bottom right of the screen to enter new e-mail recipient’s.



The insurance company will provide this code (most insurance company will provide you with a list of all employees who should receive e-mail messages and their e-mail codes).



E-Mail Recipient Code:        This code is provided by the insurance company. Usually is comprised of the recipient's first and last name.

Last Name -                           The e-mail recipient's last name

First name -                           The e-mail recipient's first name

CSIO Company -                   The CSIO insurance company code of the e-mail recipient's insurance company.

Note - All of these fields must be completed

There are a number of settings that you can specify that will allow you to customize various aspects of the policy upload and download that you will perform with your Insurance Companies.  These options have been grouped onto the EDI section of the Define Your Company Information screen set, which can be found on the Utilities Menu.

Is your Office on Policy Data Download

If you are receiving policy downloads from any of the CSIO Insurance companies, you should type a “Y” in this field.   Otherwise type an “N” if you are not doing the EDI process at this time. 

Archive Policies During Data Download

As you download and merge policies from the insurance companies, policy information screens are overwritten with the downloaded information.  Before this information is written to your policies, Power Broker can archive your existing policy information.  The archived policy information can be viewed from the ‘Archive’ button on the policy screen or from the ‘Archive menu’ of the ‘Customers’ main menu.  A note is written to the customer abeyance screen indicating ‘Policy Image Archived’.  It is recommended that this field be set to “Y”.

Archive Policies During Policy Change Forms

As an example, if you were in a policy screen and did an address change, POWER BROKER would take a snapshot of what the policy looked like prior to your address change.  You may view or print this snapshot of the policy from the ‘Archive Menu’ button on the left menu bar in the policy screen.  A note is written to the customer abeyance screen indicating ‘Policy Image Archived from Policy Change Form’.

Should Daily Download Update Customer Addresses and Telephone Numbers

During the Merge Daily Download from your Insurance Companies, the company version of the client’s name and address may be not as current as the one you may have in your database.  The company may also store the customer name in a different format than your office – for example you may store customers as last name, first name; while your companies may store as first name, last name.  This option allows you to select whether or not you wish the Insurance Company to update your clients name and address.  Enter a “Y” or “N” as desired.

Should Daily Download Create Accounting Transactions

As policies are received in the Daily Downloads, Power Broker provides an option of creating an Accounting Transaction. 

Placing a “Y” in the space provided would create a transaction in the “EDI” “Post or Delete Daily Download Transactions”.  After merging the daily downloads, you would have the option to edit, accept (post), or delete each of the download transactions.   Direct Bill transactions are completed once posted.  Agency Bill transactions will be sitting in the “Print & Post Agency Bill Transactions” batch awaiting the printing of the physical invoices.

It is possible to activate this feature on a company-by-company basis by indicating a “Y” or “N” for “Download Charges (Y/N)?” in each record of the CSIO Insurance Company table.

Placing an “N” in the space provided would allow you to do the transactions manually once the EDI transmission is received.  You would go into the policy screen and process the invoice manually.

Should Daily Download Update Line of Business Code

Your insurance companies have a Line of Business Code attached to the policy.  It may or may not be different than yours.  During the Daily Download, this code may be altered to the code stored by the insurance company.  If you wish for the download to update the Line of Business codes as displayed on your policy screens, you would place a “Y” in the space provided.  If you would like to see more about Line of Business, please refer to the “Tables” “Line of Business Code” help section”.

Should Daily Download Create 0.00 Value Accounting Transactions

When Daily Download is received, the transactions may have a zero premium.  As an example, the company sent a “No Charge/Address Change” transaction to update your database.  Placing an “N” in the space provided would update the address change or other changes but not create a zero dollar transaction in the “Post or Delete Download Transactions” batch.

Should Daily Download Update Insurance Company Code

It is recommended but not mandatory that you use the standard CSIO insurance company codes.  If using anything other than the CSIO standard codes for insurance companies as shown on your policy screens to prevent the download from changing your company codes enter a “N” in this field.

As an example, you may use an insurance company code of ECO for Economical Mutual Insurance.  The code downloaded will be the CSIO standard code of ECON. 

Should Daily Download Pull Commission Split from Producer Table

Placing a Y in this field will indicate to Power Broker that it should verify the New and Renewal splits for House and Producer under the Producer Table and change the policy screen, if warranted.  If you place an N in this field, Power Broker will accept the download transaction ‘as is’ from the insurer and will not verify the percentage splits on your Producer Table, even if the splits do not add up to 100%.

Check for Duplicate Policies from Different Insurance Companies

If you elect to say Yes to this option, Power Broker will verify duplicate policy numbers during your daily download.  If a duplicate policy number for a different insurance company is found, the download policy merge does not proceed and the duplicate is reported on the screen. 

Critical Coverage Reporting via (C)ontinuous VPN or (S)tore & Forward

CCR may be performed in Continuous VPN mode for those brokerages that have high-speed internet access, or in Store & Forward method for those brokerages connecting to the internet by way of telephone dialup and modem.  Select the connectivity method you will use to access the IICC with either a C or S.

Should Download Create / Update Claim Records

This option allows you to ‘turn off’ the downloading of Claims into your database from the insurance company by say N.

Should Download Create / Update Driver Conviction Records

This option allows you to ‘turn off’ the downloading of Convictions into your database from the insurance company by say N.

AUTO Daily Download Renewal Premium Exception Report Percentage Change

If a high and low threshold percentage is entered here, then renewing policies where the premium percentage change is either above or below the prescribed threshold will highlighted on the report with asterisks ***.  The report is printed at the time you merge the Automobile Daily Download Policies.

HABL Daily Download Renewal Premium Exception Report Percentage Change

If a high and low threshold percentage is entered here, then renewing policies where the premium percentage change is either above or below the prescribed threshold will highlighted on the report with asterisks ***.  The report is printed at the time you merge the Habitational Daily Download Policies.

Perform Duplicate Driver Number check prior to Uploading New Business

The default is YES.  This allows the system to verify all driver numbers are consistent throughout the policy database for this customer code.  If the driver numbers are not consistent, an error will appear.  Running the Duplicate Driver Report found under Utilities will allow you to verify inconsistencies.  Consistent Driver numbers are imperative for valid discounts, etc, as claims and convictions are assigned to the driver numbers.

Should Farm Policies Download into Policy Template 3 or 9

This option allows you to download FARM policies either into the Commercial Template (3) or the new Farm Template (9). The default value is to go to the Farm Template.  This applies to both Initial and Daily Downloads.

CSIO Machine Address

The machine address assigned to you by CSIO should be input in this area.  Your IBM Address is validated each time you do upload/download.



The information on this screen establishes the linkage required to integrate other software programs with Power Broker; as well as defining where your Power Broker data is stored.  Power Broker works best if the associated software is loaded on the same drive as Power Broker, but not in the BRO folder.  The Drive letter (F in our example above) for Power Broker System refers to the network drive each workstation has used to map to the Power Broker software on the server.  For successful integration with WORD, EDI and other software programs, it is imperative that all workstations use the same drive letter to map to Power Broker.

E-Mail Software

This area allows you to establish integration with the EDI software provided by Mastercom Consulting Ltd

Make note that the “Startup Files” to the right hand side of the screen (e.g. CONNECT.BAT) will be used to execute the program.