BAIS Insurance Technology has detailed how it merged BMS Risk Solutions’ client data into a single iBAIS database after it acquired five brokerages on two different insurance systems.

The tech company says it managed the migration of BMS client systems without resorting to additional technology or IT consultancy.

BAIS head of client service Sheri Andrew says the database has a “series of tried and tested protocols” for all main insurance systems to simplify mapping and migrating data.

“We are fortunate to have a team of people who have done this many times before. We provide advice and guidance, but the best people to check clients’ data integrity are the people who work with it day to day,” she said.

BMS head of operations Celia McCormack says ensuring the integrity of client and financial records is essential when integrating new books of business into existing insurance systems and moving data to a different system.

“The new acquisitions represented big growth for BMS and included more personal and small business customers,” she said. “This led to a fivefold increase in insurance transactions for the company.

“Data integrity is paramount. Before doing anything, take time to map insurance/policy class to existing data. Everyone has different classifications – get this right up front or you’ll be spending ages backtracking to clear it up later.” 

She also recommends being mindful of any additional systems. For example, the BMS client data needed to be mapped and have access to Sunrise or the Steadfast Client Trading Platform to enable policy data to be brought over.

“It’s important to communicate changes in advance and highlight what they can do to help with the transition,” Ms McCormack said.

BMS also recommends making the change at the end of a month, ideally on a weekend to keep downtime to a minimum.

“Don’t forget the need to train the account teams in the new system. We did the bulk of our training ourselves with on-site support from a highly experienced BAIS team member who could quickly troubleshoot any issues/questions that came up,” she said.

“The team from our insurance system, iBAIS, has done hundreds of data conversions and that makes a massive difference in terms of ease and the integrity of the data.”