Patent ID: 7343309

Claim:
In a computing environment, a method for providing a user with an estimate of an insurance premium for an insurance product from at least one insurance provider, comprising the steps of: transmitting one or more condition input screens from a service computer of a service underwriter to a user's computer of the user; displaying the one or more condition input screens for prompting input from the user of conditions which may effect the insurance premium; displaying an insurance provider selection screen for prompting the user to select one or more insurance providers to which to submit a request for the insurance premium estimate; receiving the conditions input by the user at the service computer; converting the conditions input by the user into a standard format suitable to a common interface, wherein the converting step is performed by the service computer; embedding by the service computer an address of a web site of each selected insurance provider in data used for subsequently displaying the received insurance premium estimates on a display unit of the user's computer; receiving, by the user's computer from the service computer, the converted conditions input having a standard format and the embedded address of a website of each selected insurance provider; after the embedding step and after the step of receiving the converted conditions input and the embedded address of a website of each selected insurance provider, sending the conditions input in the standard format to the one or more insurance providers selected by the user, wherein the sending step comprises directly sending the conditions input in the standard format from the user's computer to the selected insurance providers such that the conditions input in the standard format sent from the user's computer does not pass through or interact with the service computer while being transmitted from the user's computer to the selected insurance providers; generating a display for displaying premium estimates results on the display unit in accordance with the conditions input by the user and the one or more insurance providers selected by the user; receiving the insurance premium estimate from each of the selected insurance providers, said premium estimates having been calculated by the selected one or more insurance providers based on the conditions input, wherein the receiving step comprises directly receiving, by the user's computer, the insurance premium estimates from the selected insurance providers such that the insurance premium estimates received by the user's computer from the selected insurance providers does not pass through or interact with the service computer while being transmitted from the selected insurance providers to the user's computer; and displaying the received premium estimates on the display unit based on the embedded address of the website of each selected insurance provider.