Since the success of the initial rollout in 2011, illustrate has been working with Foresters to expand the OPUS Mobile solution. In January we rolled out a new release that now includes real-time quotes for term, par and non-par whole life, as well as new needs analysis modules for Lifestyle Protection, Mortgage Protection, Final Expense and Protection of your current cash flow.

“illustrate inc understands both our needs and the producer experience which makes them a valuable partner for Foresters,” said Stephen Maloney, Assistant Vice President, US Marketing and Communications, Foresters. “They are also highly competent and manage projects tightly so that we can meet timelines and stay on budget.”

OPUS Mobile allows producers to quickly generate a premium or face amount quote for a client and then email the quote to the client so that it is waiting when they get back to their home or office. Lorne Brown, President of illustrate inc commented, “It is a great way to establish credibility and initiate a conversation with a prospect any time or any place. All you need is your smartphone. In just a few seconds you are able to take the prospect from casual conversation to a serious discussion about how to meet their insurance needs.”

With the new rollout in January, Foresters continues to experience significant increases in usage, with over 148,000 quotes generated through February.
“Giving our highly mobile distribution access to valuable sales support tools like needs analysis and product quotes makes them more productive and more inclined to choose Foresters for their clients,” says Maloney.

“We are excited to see the success of the OPUS Mobile platform with the Foresters distribution,” stated Brown. “Since OPUS Mobile is built on our True Engine ArchitectureTM, we can easily leverage this effort as we continue to deliver Foresters full illustration and point-of-sale capability with our full OPUS platform.”

About illustrate inc
illustrate inc is a privately held company with significant expertise in illustration and point-of-sale systems used in the insurance and financial services sectors. illustrate inc has grown steadily over the past 20 years as a result of its hard focus on addressing industry need for efficiency, effectiveness and speed to market. With clients in Canada, the U.S. and abroad, illustrate inc continues to evolve to anticipate and meet the changing needs of the insurance and financial services industries. To learn more about OPUS Mobile or illustrate’s full OPUS solution visit www.illustrateinc.com.

About Foresters
Foresters™ is a life insurance provider with a difference. The fraternal benefit society, founded in 1874, supports family well-being through quality products, unique member benefits and inspiring community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with over one million members in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Foresters has assets of over $8.6 billion with liabilities of $7.1 billion resulting in a surplus of $1.4 billion1 (all figures in Canadian dollars as of December 31, 2011) and maintains an “A” (Excellent) rating by A.M. Best2. For more information, visit www.foresters.com.

Foresters™ is the trade name and a trademark of The Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society, 789 Don Mills Road, Toronto, Canada M3C 1T9; its subsidiaries are licensed to use this mark.

1This surplus represents excess funds above the amount required as legal reserves for insurance and annuity certificates in force and provides additional assurances to our members for our long term financial strength.
2 An “A” (Excellent) rating is assigned to companies that have a strong ability to meet their ongoing obligations to policyholders and have, on balance, excellent balance sheet strength, operating performance and business profile when compared to the standards established by A.M. Best Company. A.M. Best assigns ratings from A++ to F, A++ and A+ being superior ratings and A and A- being excellent ratings. In assigning Foresters rating on July 6, 2012, A.M. Best stated that the rating outlook is “stable”, which means it is unlikely to change in the near future. See ambest.com for our latest rating.

For media inquiries, please contact:
Jay Stevens, MBA, FLMI
illustrate inc
704 431 4951
877 575 5510
jay.stevens@illustrateinc.com

The answer not only lies in development technologies like HTML5, but in the solutions architecture. Today’s life and annuity illustration solutions need to be architected to be technology independent. Re-writing your illustration solutions every 5 years is not an answer. While it may be good for the solution provider, it is not a cost effective long-term solution for the customer. Life insurance providers should be looking for illustration and point-of-sale solutions that not only provide state of the art technology today, but protect their investment for years to come.

illustrate inc’s OPUS solutions with True Engine Architecture not only delivers state of the art life, wealth and health illustration and point-of-sale technology for today’s devices such as iPad, Surface and Android tablets, but it also ensures that your investment in technology today will not be wasted 5 years from now.  By isolating product specific business rules, logic, rates and calculations away for the calculation, report and user interface engines, OPUS allows an easy migration path to tomorrow’s technology, without sacrificing today.  You can build it once for today’s tablets, smartphones, laptops and desktops and still be ready for tomorrow’s unknown.

Technology can provide great advantages, but without the right architecture, it’s only part of the answer.

About illustrate inc

illustrate inc is an industry leader in illustration and point-of-sale systems used in the insurance and financial service sectors throughout North America. illustrate inc has grown steadily over the past 20 years as a result of its hard focus on addressing industry need for efficiency, effectiveness and speed to market. For more information, please visit www.illustrateinc.com.

(Download: Architecture matters in today’s mobile solutions (PDF))

With this growing demand for more complex features and functionality, comes the issue of how to ensure quality. The same is true of today’s life and annuity illustration systems. With demands for more functionality, integration with 3^rd party systems, more complex calculations and higher demand for complex business rules, the stress on quality is being pushed.   It requires new approaches and designs to ensure that the quality is better today than ever before.  Customers demand it; whether the customer is an agent, consumer, banker, or financial planner, the quality has to be there.  Otherwise it is a reflection on the carrier.  So, how do you ensure that your solutions provide the quality you demand?

How do you ensure quality?

It starts with design.  In order to deliver higher quality, you have to test more which takes more time.  The problem is that most companies have very tight development cycles in order to compete in the market.  Developing a new product illustration in 8 to 12 months just won’t do.  So what happens?  Typically the first area cut or reduced in a development project plan is quality assurance testing.  While everyone recognizes the importance of quality assurance, it is also the easiest to cut in order to meet demanding delivery schedules.  With most of today’s illustrations each new product family, i.e. UL, Term, Whole Life, Annuity, Disability or Critical Illness comes with its own calculation engine.  Additionally, each carrier’s illustration comes with its own custom set of engines that are unique to their products. This means that all the testing of the illustration comes from either the software development team and/or the insurance carrier.  Now when you cut back on development testing cycles you maximize your opportunity for lower quality and ultimately jeopardize your company’s reputation with the producers or consumers. Not very appealing is it?

What if there was a better way?

What if you could have every carrier test the same set of engines every time it is delivered?  What if every user that touches the system becomes a quality assurance tester?  With the OPUS True Engine Architecture^TM they can.  illustrate inc’s industry leading technology design is a better way.  With the True Engine Architecture, each company’s product rules, calculations, business rules and rounding requirements are completely separate from the product engines.  This means that there truly is one engine for all companies.  Now when you develop a new product illustration, you can rest assured that numerous carriers, thousands of users, and illustrates own quality assurance team have all tested the engine time and time again.  This ensures the industry’s most trusted illustration solution, OPUS, delivers the quality that your end users demand, and that you deserve.

To find out more about OPUS and True Engine Architecture, visit www.illustrateinc.com today.

(Download: Is technology outpacing real quality in today’s life and annuity illustrations? PDF)

As usual the main driving factor is growth. But it has to be growth that makes sense. That means that companies will often look for synergies in their acquisitions that allow them to merge corporate functions and/or specific operations in order to achieve economies of scale. These economies create greater profit potential and ultimately help companies achieve success.

Economies of scale can benefit companies in a number of areas, including technology. But how can a solution’s architecture help companies achieve economies of scale? The OPUS illustration solution from illustrate inc and its True Engine Architecture can deliver economies of scale that generate long-term benefits for their customers. With the True Engine Architecture, each company’s product rules, calculations, business rules and rounding requirements are completely separate from the product engines. This means that there truly is one engine for all companies.

As technologies change and new devices permeate the market, insurance companies are looking to take advantage of the new technologies and upgrade their solutions.  In the past this would mean that each company was looking at a potential re-write of their illustration solution at significant costs whether they stayed with their current vendor or went to a new solution.  Neither option was cost effective.  With True Engine Architecture, illustrate inc’s OPUS Solution has the benefit of only having to convert a single instance of the engines in order to upgrade technologies.  Once the engines are upgraded, each client can choose to take advantage of the new upgrade on their schedule.  This means that rather than a re-write of their entire solution, the engine upgrade costs are spread across all clients, and each client is simply responsible for testing the upgrade.  As new customers come on board the costs for future upgrades becomes a fraction of what it would have been.

Focus on your core strengths

Stop re-inventing your illustration solution every 3 to 5 years and start focusing on your key strength of creating new insurance products that generate revenue.  By outsourcing your illustration solution to a solutions provider you get great technology today.  By outsourcing your solution to illustrate inc and our OPUS platform with True Engine Architecture, you get best of breed technology today and peace of mind that your technology will deliver for years to come.

To find out more about OPUS and True Engine Architecture, visit www.illustrateinc.com today.

¹ Graphic source:  PwC US Mid-Year M&A Outlook 2011 (http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2011/pwc-us-mid-year-m-and-a-outlook-2011.jhtml)

(Download: Can a technology’s architecture help drive economies of scale for illustrations? PDF)

If you plan on attending the American Fraternal Alliance Annual Meeting in New Orleans, join us in celebrating the launch of the new OPUS Connect Web-based illustration platform at our launch reception. Featuring our True Engine Architecture and SmartFile technology, OPUS Connect is the industry’s first true software as a service offering.

We will be at Broussard’s, one of New Orleans’ oldest and finest restaurants.

Date: Friday Sept 7th
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Broussard’s
Address: 819 Rue Conti Street New Orleans, LA 70112

Broussard’s is located just a short walk from the Ritz-Carlton and the dress is business casual. Join us for an Open Bar, Heavy Hors d’oeuvres and other classic New Orleans fare. Learn more about Broussard’s Historic New Orleans Restaurant.

For more, please contact:

Jay Stevens, MBA, FLMI
illustrate inc
704 431 4951
877 575 5510
jay.stevens@illustrateinc.com

“With the success we have achieved with illustrate’s mobile quoting platform, which we rolled out in 2011, the OPUS choice is a natural extension of our current capabilities,” said Stephen Maloney, Assistant Vice President of Marketing, US Branch with Foresters. “illustrate has shown us that they can deliver. We wanted a clean, simple to use, yet powerful solution for our producers. Our US distribution is critical to our overall success and the OPUS platform, which is designed to run as both a connected and disconnected solution, will integrate nicely with our strategic direction of automating and streamlining our business processes for our US producers.”

“We are excited to be working with Foresters to create a quality solution for their US producers,” stated Lorne Brown, President, illustrate inc. “We recognize that our success as a company depends on our ability to deliver the solutions the market demands in a timely and cost effective manner. We were able to deliver with the Foresters Mobile Quote solution last year and obviously that played a major role in winning their trust and confidence to move ahead with the full OPUS platform. We appreciate the confidence they have shown in us, by becoming our first major US implementation.”

About illustrate inc
illustrate inc is a privately held company with significant expertise in illustration and point-of-sale systems used in the insurance and financial services sectors. illustrate inc has grown steadily over the past 20 years as a result of its hard focus on addressing industry need for efficiency, effectiveness and speed to market. With clients in Canada and abroad, illustrate inc continues to evolve to anticipate and meet the changing needs of the insurance and financial services industries. For more information, please visit www.illustrateinc.com

About Foresters
Foresters™ is a life insurance provider with a difference. The fraternal benefit society, founded in 1874, supports family well-being through quality products, unique member benefits and inspiring community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with almost 950,000 members in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Foresters has assets of over $8.6 billion with liabilities of $7.1 billion resulting in a surplus of $1.4 billion (all figures in Canadian dollars as of December 31, 2011) and maintains an “A” (Excellent) rating by A.M. Best1. For more information visit www.foresters.com.

Foresters™ is the trade name and a trademark of The Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society, 789 Don Mills Road, Toronto, Canada M3C 1T9; its subsidiaries are licensed to use this mark.

1An “A” (Excellent) rating is assigned to companies that have a strong ability to meet their ongoing obligations to policyholders and have, on balance, excellent balance sheet strength, operating performance and business profile when compared to the standards established by A.M. Best Company. A.M. Best assigns ratings from A++ to F, A++ and A+ being superior ratings and A and A- being excellent ratings. In assigning Foresters rating on July 6, 2012, A.M. Best stated that the rating outlook is “stable”, which means it is unlikely to change in the near future. See ambest.com for our latest rating.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Jay Stevens, MBA, FLMI
illustrate inc
704 431 4951
877 575 5510
jay.stevens@illustrateinc.com