The property and casualty insurance group of Unitrin, Inc. is made up of Kemper[1] and Unitrin Specialty, which sell personal lines and commercial auto insurance through a network of independent agents, and Unitrin Direct, which sells personal auto and homeowners insurance directly to consumers. The group represents 72 per cent of Unitrin's $2.4 billion of annual insurance premiums..

According to Brice Garcia, Director of Policy Systems for Unitrin Services Group, the Thunderhead NOW platform will enable the company to consolidate the forms infrastructure for its three property and casualty segments. "Thunderhead offers flexible, standards-based technology with broad functionality. Its ability to work with ACORD XML made the solution an easy choice for us and we look forward to completing the implementation," he said.

ACORD XML standards allow data to be exchanged seamlessly across applications and businesses, increasing efficiency and enabling insurance and financial services firms to communicate electronically with agents, brokers and other data partners in the industry.

As part of the implementation, Thunderhead NOW will be integrated with Unitrin's Enterprise Service Bus in support of its Service Oriented Architecture. This integration will facilitate the communication between Thunderhead NOW and other critical business applications like Unitrin's Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software.

By implementing Thunderhead, Unitrin expects to significantly reduce operational costs through streamlined business processes, Garcia added. Empowering its business users to manage form modifications will enable Unitrin to reduce demand on its technical resources, gain faster time to market and adapt more easily to regulatory changes.

"We are delighted that Unitrin has selected Thunderhead NOW as its customer correspondence solution," said Thunderhead CEO Glen Manchester. "With this solution, Unitrin will be able to beetter personalise customer communications across all delivery channels to provide a truly differentiated experience for its customers."

"Unitrin is a great example of how Thunderhead customers directly benefit from Thunderhead's XML-based architecture and broad support for open standards," Manchester added. "Thunderhead's innovative, open design enables us to readily support important industry standards, like ACORD XML, and to seamlessly integrate with our customers' service-oriented architectures."

[1] Unitrin uses the registered trademark "Kemper" under license, for personal lines insurance only, from Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company, which is not affiliated with Unitrin.