Applications:

Sagent Delivers Critical Fire Protection Classification App

Sagent, a leading provider of Business Intelligence solutions, announced the general availability of the Sagent Fire Protection Classification application for property & casualty (P&C) insurers, including the first national database of fire station locations. Sagent is offering a complete solution based on the AAIS Simplified Fire Protection Classification System-one that will utilize Sagent's geographic determination suite of tools, including address standardization, geocoding, spatial analysis and the fire station database. Using this new product, P&C insurers can accurately and immediately determine at the point of customer interaction how close a home or business is to a fire station-a critical rating variable for those insurers in order to underwrite policies.

"Based on demand from our insurance clients, we started building this application nearly two years ago," said Steve Walden, vice president, Insurance Solutions, Sagent. "We were amazed that there was no national database of fire station locations, and knew that we had to develop this database on our own. Now, we have an application capable of determining the fire protection classification of every address in the United States."

Unlike similar products, the Sagent Fire Protection Classification application is not based on transaction fees. As a result, it becomes more cost-effective now for P&C insurers to use this ground-breaking technology for both quoting and binding policies. Homesite, an innovative, direct-to-the-consumer insurance company who protects homes and personal property, is a Sagent customer doing just that, filing this method in 21 states without any regulatory issues.

"We were looking for an easy-to-use, more cost-effective solution for determining fire protection on an individual policy basis, applying protection class to our policies," said Manuel Rios, vice president of underwriting, Homesite. "Sagent's Fire Protection Classification application will allow us to identify protection class for quoting as well as binding, which was never cost-effective for us before now."

Additionally, the Sagent Fire Protection Classification application uses a simplified method for determining fire protection classification. This method is based on calculating the distance between a home or business and the fire station and the availability of water. After finding that distance, insurers can determine the "risk" of the dwelling and label it as "protected," "partially protected" or "unprotected." The theory commonly followed by the P&C industry is that the dominant factor in the ability of a fire department to save a dwelling is how quickly fire fighters can get to it. Insurers using the Sagent Fire Protection Classification application and the first national fire station database positively answers to that theory.

And, as insurers move to multiple channels of delivering policies, such as the Internet and call centers, having technology such as Sagent's Fire Protection Classification application to assign key underwriting variables in an automated, consistent fashion across these channels has become critical to the industry's success.

Miller Herber Lehman & Associates Inc, an actuarial consulting firm, has recently examined the Sagent fire protection method and compared it with some of the other systems currently in use by insurance companies. In particular, the consulting firm was asked how Sagent's method would compare to the protection class method used by Insurance Services Office (ISO)-a well-known supplier of statistical, actuarial, underwriting and claims information to the P&C insurance industry.

"The Sagent methodology has great potential as a rating factor for homeowners and property insurance in the United States, particularly as one considers that accurate miles to the nearest fire department may now be obtainable," said Jeff Kucera, a consultant with MHL. "The ease and accuracy of applying the Sagent system are two major advantages of their system. And, I believe that as companies begin comparing the two systems using their own data, they may find that the Sagent system does at least as good a job as protection classes of predicting future losses."

About Homesite

Focusing exclusively on the homeowners market, Homesite has concentrated on addressing problems long associated with the U.S. homeowners insurance business: high fixed costs, limited distribution channels, and minimal technological innovation. Homesite's products are available through a variety of direct and intermediary channels and are distributed through call centers, the Internet and proprietary channels. Homesite continues to bring cutting-edge technology, innovative marketing and distribution strategies, and expertise in catastrophe management to the homeowners business.

Solid financial stability and extensive management experience provide the foundation for Homesite's comprehensive coverage and exceptional service. The equity financing for Homesite was arranged by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Capital Partners, the private equity group of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the global financial services firm.

About Sagent

Sagent's suite of Business Intelligence solutions enables companies to measurably impact their business by implementing highly successful customer relationship and financial management initiatives. Through Sagent's powerful enabling technologies, organizations can easily and rapidly turn company data into relevant information that can be used for effective decision-making, analysis and reporting. Information can be extracted from multiple sources (internal and external), optimized for decision support and delivered in a customized format for Web-based or client applications. Even the most complex analytic application can be developed in weeks, not months.

More than 1,500 companies have selected Sagent software to enhance customer retention, cross-sell/up-sell, improve customer service, increase efficiencies of marketing campaigns, streamline business operations, analyze financials, and reduce costs. Customers include AT&T, BP Amoco, Boeing Employees Credit Union, Bristol Meyers, British Telecom, California State Automobile Association, Citibank, GPU Energy, Hughes Aircraft Employees Federal Credit Union, Johnson & Johnson (UK), Kemper National Insurance, Provident Central Credit Union, Safeway and Siemens. Sagent retains strategic relationships with partners such as Advent Software, Commerce One, Compaq, EDS, IBM, Microsoft, NEC, SAS and Sun Microsystems. Sagent is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and can be reached at www.sagent.com.

Contact Michael A. Piotrowski, Sagent, 727-725-9727 x2230, mpiotrowski@sagent.com.