Wheaton, Ill., Nov. 16, 2007— Property/casualty insurers that use the AAIS Homeowners Program and the AAISdirect Internet service now have access to new automated Manual Implementation Tools to help them adopt the latest revision to the program.

AAIS, the American Association of Insurance Services, is a national advisory organization that develops policy forms and rating information used by more than 600 P/C carriers throughout the U.S. AAISdirect provides online access to AAIS forms, manuals, product bulletins, and other risk information.

Today, AAIS released new tools over AAISdirect to facilitate the rating of policies under the revised AAIS Homeowners Program. A Homeowners Rating Worksheet, developed using Microsoft Excel, incorporates countrywide manual rules, formulas, and factors to help verify premium calculations by company systems during implementation of the new program. Homeowners rating examples demonstrate how the worksheets operate using hypothetical cases.

In addition, the new Manual Implementation Tools expand on existing Homeowners rating information data sets provided in Excel and XML format. In addition to the existing state-specific data sets for basic Homeowners rating information, AAIS will also provide state-specific data sets for optional coverage loss costs, rating factors, and territorial definitions.

The new Manual Implementation Tools arise from an initiative led by Janice Nieman, a longtime AAIS staff member who is now serving as director of technical product support.

"These tools will allow companies to upload the latest rating information into their systems," Nieman says in a brief interview available as an audio file at www.AAISonline.com. "They can help companies rate policies and perform comparative rating between the new revision and the version they are using."

Nieman adds that, "The rating worksheet automates the rating formula so companies can quickly rate a policy or could pull the formula apart to program a formula into their own systems."