Employee Benefits provider KMG America and its subsidiary Kanawha Insurance Company will be the first insurer to test a new Microsoft Word-based tool for speeding the creation of state-specific insurance documents and policies.

The tool, InSystems Writer, allows insurers to add metadata to a master document to tailor documents for different states, lines of business or products, explains Neil Betteridge, InSystems vice president of marketing. In other words, working on a master insurance policy template in Microsoft Word, insurers would be able to add metadata that affects only policies issued in Texas, for example. They could add other metadata changing and altering sections of the document for other states as well.

“The great thing is that this is all saved as part of one master template, instead of having to separately manage many different versions and revisions of 50 different documents for different states,” said Betteridge.

“I anticipate this will save us a lot of time and headaches,” said Pamela Gillespie, 2nd vice president and chief compliance officer.

Basically, it allows users to make notations that if a policy is issued in the state of New York, exclude these paragraphs, or add these changes. The metadata is added to a Word document so that it is an easy and familiar format for users to work with.

“Our developers have worked closely with Microsoft so they are familiar with Word and how to add metadata into it for tracking and managing variations by state, line of business and product,” Betteridge said.

InSystems Writer was shipped November 30 and KMG America was the first customer. The adoption of Writer adds to the existing relationship between KMG America and InSystems. In June, KMG America licensed InSystem's Calligo Doc Services and Tracker products. At that time the company saw a demonstration of Writer and was enthusiastic about its capabilities.

InSystems Calligo is a document fulfillment product that helps with document retrieval, assembly, rendering, delivery and storage. It works well with Writer in that after alterations are created in Writer, KMG America will be able to import the document into Calligo, and Calligo can automatically help assemble and produce customized versions of a document for different states or lines of business. The Tracker product contains a database of different regulations filing rules for different states and helps automate the state compliance process.