SilverBridge, a software solutions provider to the financial services industry, has launched SilverBridge Snapper, a tool that provides insurance companies the ability to generate contract documentation by merging Exergy data with custom templates.

The company’s CIO and Product Development Executive JC Oberholzer says the insurance sector is an ever-changing changing environment, largely as a result of the developments in the realms of politics, economics and social circumstances.

“Seeing as the insurance market is subject to constant change, SilverBridge introduced an automated correspondence and document system, offering its clients the possibility of responding quickly to changes in the market or changes to the situations of clients,” he says.

Snapper offers an entry level alternative to SilverBridge partner AIA’s ITP product as from release 21. “Life assurers can now automatically generate policies and personalised correspondence.”

“It is crucial for SilverBridge’s clients to be able to work independently with the correspondence solution, they don’t want to depend on SilverBridge’s consultants for the implementation of changes to documents. User-friendliness was therefore a key requirement,” he says.

Snapper provides the ability to setup document templates as well as the ability to merge these templates with Exergy data in order to generate client documentation.

Oberholzer says setting up document templates is done using a WYSIWIG word processing front-end, very similar to Microsoft Word. “Data fields are dropped into the template in the appropriate places, and the user has the ability to format the content of the document using the word processing editor.”

The template is used by Exergy to generate contract documentation on contract events, by merging the contract data with the Snapper template. The documents can be printed for posting or emailed. More importantly, documents can also automatically be attached to the client and contract and stored within the Exergy repository database.

“The user interface provides similar capabilities than that of MS Word. Creation of templates does not require technical resources, resources that are familiar with word processing can setup and maintain the templates,” he explains.

Snapper requires no additional third party software and also no additional licensing contracts with other vendors. Deployment to servers and workstations is really simple and site licensing allows clients to have unlimited installations of Snapper for the purpose of template development and testing.

“Documents can be stored in the Exergy store once generated, it enables client service to quickly locate and view documents linked to the client or contract of claim – providing improved customer service,” he concludes.