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HealthMarkets Selects Sircon to Help Manage Growing Network of Insurance Producers
Automated Producer Lifecycle Management to Speed Agent On-Boarding Capabilities
Okemos, Mich., January 8, 2007 - Sircon Corporation today announced that HealthMarkets Agency Marketing Group will be the latest customer to use its producer lifecycle platform for automating its agent activation process.
HealthMarkets, through its subsidiary insurance companies The MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee and The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company, is one of America's leading providers of affordable health insurance for the individual, self-employed and small business markets. It will utilize Sircon for Carriers™ in order to streamline agent activation and maintenance operations.
"We're constantly looking to improve efficiencies and increase the speed at which we activate new agents," said Mark Hauptman, Executive Vice President of HealthMarkets' Agency Marketing Group. "Sircon's solutions will give our agents direct online access to activation services, which we expect will minimize paperwork and eliminate processing delays."
New producer packets utilized by insurance may contain up to 50 pages of forms and go back and forth manually between carriers, regulators and agents several times, for correction. As a result, the agent activation process can take weeks or even months to complete. This delay creates bottlenecks for agents and carriers and therefore adversely affects revenue opportunities.
Through Sircon, HealthMarkets' Agency Marketing Group can improve its control over producer information and increase its capacity for activating prospective agents for HealthMarkets' underwriting companies. Sircon's software-as-a-service (SaaS) model can be implemented very quickly and cost effectively. Once implemented, it opens up direct online access between insurance carriers, recruiting locations, agents and state regulators to process electronic appointments, terminations, license applications, renewals and many other services easily and securely over the web. Utilizing Sircon's services, HealthMarkets' Agency Marketing Group expects to be able to streamline agent activation workflow, reduce the time required for agents to become productive and improve the management of agent information.
"By implementing an approach that automates the entire producer lifecycle, insurance companies such as HealthMarkets are finding that complex contracting and licensing processes become much easier and far less time consuming," said Robert Nero, Sircon's President and CEO "Streamlining the agent activation process will also help Healthmarkets increase its network of producers and grow its business faster."
About Sircon Corporation
Sircon Corporation provides a comprehensive producer lifecycle platform to grow, manage and optimize producer channels. The company offers this platform as software-as-a-service (SaaS) to deliver immediate and compelling value to insurance carriers, insurance distributors, producers (agents) and state regulators for licensing, recruiting, contracting, regulatory compliance, education tracking and producer management. Sircon's solutions provide essential industry services by connecting these stakeholders through the Sircon network. For more information, please visit www.sircon.com or call 877.876.4450.
About HealthMarkets
HealthMarkets, headquartered in North Richland Hills, Texas, is a provider of health and life insurance products to individuals, families, the self-employed and small businesses. HealthMarkets offers products and services through its subsidiaries: The MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee and The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company. The company's offerings include individual and self employed health insurance, small employer group health insurance, life insurance and reinsurance. Through its Consumer Guided Health Insurance plans, HealthMarkets seeks to provide affordable and accessible health coverage to individuals and small businesses. The company is owned by of a group of private equity investors, including The Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and DLJ Merchant Banking Partners, members of management and the company's dedicated, licensed agents through the company's agent stock accumulation plans. For more information, visit www.healthmarkets.com.
SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995: Some of the matters discussed in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements are intended to be identified in this document by the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "objective", "plan", "possible", "potential" and similar expressions. Actual results may vary materially from those included in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those included in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, general economic conditions; the continued ability of HealthMarkets (the "Company") to compete for customers and insureds in an industry where many of its competitors may have greater market share and/or greater financial resources; the Company's ability to accurately estimate medical claims and control costs; changes in government regulation that could increase the costs of compliance or cause the Company to discontinue marketing its products in certain states; the Company's failure to comply with new or existing government regulation that could subject it to significant fines and penalties; changes in the relationship between the Company and the membership associations and/or changes in the laws and regulations governing so-called "association group" insurance (particularly changes that would subject the issuance of policies to prior premium rate approval and/or require the issuance of policies on a "guaranteed issue" basis); significant liabilities and costs associated with litigation; failure of the Company's information systems to provide timely and accurate information; negative publicity regarding the Company's business practices and/or regarding the health insurance industry in general; the Company's inability to enter into or maintain satisfactory relationships with networks of hospitals, physicians, dentists, pharmacies and other health care providers; failure of the Company's regulated insurance company subsidiaries to maintain their current ratings by A.M. Best Company, Fitch and/or Standard & Poor's; and the other risk factors set forth in the reports filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Heather Fraelick
Airfoil Public Relations
248.304.1439
fraelick@airfoilpr.com
Scott Morrison
Sircon Corporation
517.381.3828
smorrison@sircon.com
Donna Ledbetter
HealthMarkets
817.255.5405
donna.ledbetter@healthmarkets.com