AQS Partners With FirstBest to Help P&C Insurers Speed Application Process and Deliver Products to Market More Quickly

HARTLAND, WI and BEDFORD, MA--(Marketwire - June 8, 2009) - AQS, Inc., a provider of policy administration systems for property/casualty insurance, and FirstBest® Systems, Inc., developer of advanced Underwriting Management Systems™ (UMS) that enable property and casualty (P&C) insurance carriers to profit from better underwriting, have announced a strategic alliance to deliver AQS' comprehensive rating and policy administration system with FirstBest's agent portal and underwriting management system for P&C insurance carriers. Under the terms of the agreement, AQS Access and AQS Advantage will integrate with FirstBest UMS™ and FirstBest Agent™ to automate agent and underwriter rating and quoting within FirstBest's highly productive and collaborative workflow. The combined products will deliver the depth and reliability of AQS ISO-based rating and policy capabilities within a state-of-the-art underwriting management system that offers significant productivity, quality and collaboration improvements to carriers and their agents, at the speed of market.

"The advanced technology of FirstBest will complement the policy administration capabilities and tools-based flexibility of AQS Access and AQS Advantage," said Bruce Davis, AQS' CMO. "It also will expand the ease with which agents can collaborate with us. And we expect carriers to be even happier. The UMS underwriting rules configuration and its clearance capabilities -- combined with the adaptable configurability of our policy administration systems -- will enable companies to write business more efficiently."

"FirstBest is committed to delivering a complete solution for P&C carriers. By combining the highly-respected ISO rating platform from AQS with FirstBest Agent and FirstBest UMS, we greatly enhance the business agility of insurers, and foster a level of ease-of-doing-business that makes them the carrier of choice among their agents," commented John Belizaire, CEO of FirstBest Systems.

An integrated demo of AQS and FirstBest will be available at IASA. Stop by the FirstBest booth #313 to view the live demo.

About AQS, Inc.

Since 1979, AQS has been providing policy administration and business-support services to property/casualty insurers, supporting all transactions for all lines of business in all 50 states. AQS products deliver scalability and interoperability, using Web services and .NET architecture to maximize extensibility, to optimize integration with other systems, and to automate the entire policy life cycle. For more information, please visit www.aqssys.com.

About FirstBest Systems

FirstBest® Systems, Inc. delivers advanced Underwriting Management Systems™ (UMS) that enable insurance companies to write more business and write better business. The FirstBest UMS™ combines a next-generation underwriting workstation with a rich agent portal for commercial lines carriers. Insurers can achieve greater speed and business agility, provide real-time collaboration to make it easy for agents to do business with them, promote enhanced underwriting discipline and best practices, scale their book of business profitably, and empower underwriters and agents with greater visibility into the business. FirstBest Agent™, the company's next-generation agent portal, is now offered as a stand-alone solution and provides carriers with all agency-facing capabilities to enable a faster path to market-driven ROI, while enabling ease of doing business with agents. For more information, visit www.firstbest.com or call 1.888.863.6095.

Contact Information: Media Contacts: Nancy Hines 803-790-4200 Meira Primes 781-863-6027