Electronic Cover Notes (ECN) via imarket
What is it?
Electronic Cover Note (ECN) Service is an imarket service, which enables the secure request and delivery of cover notes for private motor (inc motorcycle), commercial vehicle and motor fleet insurance.
The ECN service is published to the imarket services index and then made available to intermediaries by insurers in the normal way.
Registered imarket intermediaries can access the service and request a covernote for a specific insurer and product.
- What is the broker process?
- What are the benefits of using this functionality?
- What Norwich Union products will brokers be able to produce electronic covernotes for?
- What training information is available?
- How much does it cost?
- What do brokers need to do?
- Incentives
- Norwich Union contacts for brokers
What is the broker process?
In principle the process for brokers is as follows:
- Broker needs to be registered to imarket and passwords received
- Log onto imarket
- Selects an insurers ECD (Electronic Covernotes Document) request service
- Fills in an Xform (electronic template as per paper covernote)
- Submits to imarket
- Receives confirmation of request from imarket
- Receives email in inotes with covernote attached
- Opens email attachment
- Prints covernote, one page for customer and a second for broker. The final document is professionally produced, time & date stamped and guaranteed tamper-proof. In addition, the service prevents retrospective cover note issue, reducing the risk of fraud.
- Insurer receives an electronic covernote notification
What are the benefits of using this functionality?
The process takes a matter of minutes allowing brokers to produce professional covernotes, and by adopting a more efficient business process, brokers will be able to eliminate the need to send hard copy covernotes to insurers.
- Professional document : Particularly for non-EDI environments the ECN service provides a quality, laser printed document to give to the customer rather than a hand-written cover note from a cover note book.
- Mirrors existing processes : Data requirements and layout reflect the cover note book experience meaning that staff training is minimal.
- imarket access controls : The intermediary can control access to the cover note service by means of standard imarket authentication. Untrained or inexperienced members of staff can be prevented from unsupervised access to cover note production facilities.
- Reusability : Data submitted using the ECN service can be saved by the intermediary and then reused as a template for future requests. This is especially useful for:
- Correcting keying errors
- Obtaining cover notes for multi-vehicle or fleet policies
- Continuation cover notes
- Accelerates the policy issue process : Data is transmitted to the insurer directly at the time of issue meaning that policy production will be based on data directly keyed by the intermediary.
- Prevents Postal Delays : Sending covernotes to Customers.
The result is a lower incidence of error rates in non-EDI based motor business and faster delivery of an accurate policy document to the proposer.
What Norwich Union products will brokers be able to produce electronic covernotes for?
- Private Car/Power Point Club (excluding Collector's Car)
- Premier Bike
- Your Van/Premier Van
- Taxi
- Farmers
- Special Types and Agricultural
- Motor Trade
- Minifleet
- Fleetwise
- Premier Truck
- Home and Drivers Private Car
- Home and Drivers Premier Bike
- Home and Drivers Your Van
What training information is available?
A training package called imarket ECN demo is available within the i-market system. This can be located in the following way:
- Products & Services
- Policy Servicing
- Covernote Request
- the link to the demo will now be displayed on screen under 'Insurer Websites'. The link is called 'Dfqto ECN Covernote Demonstration'
- Select the link
How much does it cost?
There is no charge to an intermediary for use of the ECN service.
What do brokers need to do?
If you would like to take advantage and have the ability to issue commercial lines, or a personal lines covernote where your software house is unable to, then complete our online registration form.
Incentives
Watch out for Polaris communication around broker incentives for users of electronic covernotes.
Norwich Union contacts for brokers
e-broking support team - 01603 687666
imarket helpdesk - 0845 225 5766
