Safety also has signed a 10-year agreement with CSC for applications support and managed hosting services. Safety plans to process policies for lines of insurance business other than auto on Exceed components to provide more flexible and scalable billing and claims services to its customers. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

A CSC client since 1997, Boston-based Safety Insurance has used CSC's Series II software and services to develop Web services for its independent agents and a straight-through processing platform for its personal and commercial auto business. Under the new 10-year agreement, CSC will host Safety's system at CSC's data center in Blythewood, S.C. (where Series II is also hosted), manage the insurance company's information technology (IT) infrastructure and security, and provide applications maintenance.

"Policy processing is the basis of everything we do," said Jim Berry, Safety vice president of Insurance Operations. "CSC takes an active role in our day-to-day world, and with their software and services supporting our robust processing platform, we have been able to grow in our challenging market."

"Building long-term relationships with our clients has helped us develop insurance solutions that evolve with the industry's needs," said Ray August, president of the Property & Casualty (P&C) Insurance division of CSC's Financial Services Group. "CSC's experience in delivering positive business results for Safety Insurance proves our approach works."

CSC's Exceed, a comprehensive set of software components for the P&C casualty insurance industry, extends, enhances and evolves administration legacy systems for large insurers, as well as supports system replacement. The system's architecture, which is built around a thin-client presentation, is based on industry-standard ACORD XML.

With Exceed Billing, customer service representatives, agents and insurance customers enter, review and edit billing information in real time through a standard Internet browser. Exceed Claims supports each step of the claims process, including notice of loss, policy and coverage verification, and financial processing and workload management. Exceed Client, which enables insurers to compile comprehensive customer profiles, also includes functions for marketing opportunities such as cross-selling.