Property and casualty insurer

Business challenge

Today’s consumers demand a lot more from their insurance company. As this insurance provider launched a new commercial lines brand, how could it ensure it lived up to these high expectations?

Transformation

The insurer has built its new business on strong foundations, harnessing leading enterprise content management software from IBM to help teams deliver a high-touch, high-quality customer experience.

Results

Business challenge story

Building a future-ready business

Modern technology has revolutionized our lives in the name of convenience: we can now order groceries, book flights and shop for clothes without even having to move from the couch. In this age of instant gratification, it’s not just retail and leisure services that need to deliver fast—all companies need to get smarter about how they serve customers, or they risk becoming irrelevant.

In light of this new reality, one leading insurer set out to meet the changing expectations of its customers by launching a new property and casualty insurance company built for the technological age. For this new entity, harnessing the power of digital channels to provide great service was an essential part of its go-to-market strategy.

A spokesperson explains: “When we established the new venture, we set out to provide our commercial clients with a cutting-edge insurance experience that offered customized policies, slick service and very rapid response times. To realize this goal, we needed to make sure that we invested in the very best technology.

“In particular, having a solid enterprise content management [ECM] strategy is a must because we need to review large amounts of highly detailed documentation rapidly and efficiently in order to deliver great service. In the property and casualty market this challenge is intensified, as we serve businesses that employ many workers and have multiple assets located across the globe. Generally, a greater number of assets necessitates a greater level of complexity in a client’s insurance policy as more risk variants have to be factored into their coverage—producing more, often lengthy, documentation.

“While the content management solutions that we use at other group companies offer great functionality, we felt that we needed to go a step further with the launch of this new venture. To make life easier for our associates and to satisfy customer expectations, we set out to find the solutions that would enable us to provide a totally integrated digital experience.”

Transformation story

Industry leading innovation

To support its new commercial lines business, the insurer implemented a range of best-of-breed solutions.

The spokesperson continues: “We integrated solutions from three different vendors. We chose Guidewire InsuranceSuite to strengthen our underwriting, policy management, billing and claims management processes. We selected this solution because it is one of the best insurance processing suites on the market and could provide us with the single source of truth that would form the foundation of the back-end services at our new venture.”

To complement Guidewire InsuranceSuite, the insurance provider built a new content management platform with IBM® FileNet® Content Manager, which serves as its core document repository, and IBM Content Navigator, which provides a web-based interface for accessing the information held in FileNet Content Manager.

“We have been using IBM ECM solutions at other group companies for several years, and I have personally been using FileNet Content Manager for over two decades,” says the spokesperson. “I’ve seen first-hand how the software can transform productivity and efficiency, so choosing IBM really was a no-brainer.”

The insurer also makes use of Snowbound’s VirtualViewer HTML5, a pure HTML5 document viewer that seamlessly integrates with FileNet Content Navigator. VirtualViewer allows underwriters to easily search, read and collaborate on important documentation, including the ability to annotate existing FileNet annotations, as well as create new ones.

The spokesperson adds: “We performed an exhaustive evaluation of three major players in the document viewer space, and put the final decision to our end-users. The business overwhelmingly voted for Snowbound, as it offered the best user experience and approach to document viewing.

“One of the most important features that Snowbound Virtual Viewer HTML5 offers is the ability to search within PDFs. As the documents we work with typically span hundreds of pages, being able to search for specific information is critical—without this capability, our associates would have to spend hours trawling through documents manually.”

The insurance provider has taken a phased approach to its implementation, and has currently launched the new solutions at operations in several states.

“We were incredibly surprised by how smooth the implementation was,” recalls the spokesperson. “In a relatively short space of time, we have created a new brand infrastructure, a new operating entity and a new brand identity—and we delivered all of this without any major complications!”

Results story

Accelerated processes, speedy insurance

In the locations where the new insurance brand has already gone to market, the company is reaping the rewards of operating an integrated suite of content management solutions. With this technology in place, the insurer can provide a seamless, responsive experience for its customers.

“IBM ECM solutions, deployed alongside Guidewire and Snowbound software, have transformed our entire way of doing business,” says the spokesperson. “We are able to react faster to policy changes, make smarter decisions and deliver more responsive customer service. In essence, we have brought the customer-centric approach and levels of service associated with consumer products to the insurance industry.

“From an internal processing perspective, the solutions provide us with a single point of control and help us monitor the way in which each and every customer interacts with our services. Indeed, with near-instant access to all content such as policy documents, claims filed and forms of evidence linked to a single customer, our teams can make timelier, better-informed decisions when processing applications and claims requests. Our associates are happy with the solutions too, as it gives them the ability to process claims rapidly and deliver a faster response when customers get in touch with questions.”

Ultimately, the insurer plans to have all of its operations—covering both commercial and personal lines—live on the new platform by mid-2018.

The spokesperson concludes: “In the near future, we plan to integrate IBM Case Manager with our IBM ECM landscape. This will provide our teams with additional case management capabilities and drive even more efficient document processing. For now, we are very pleased with how IBM solutions, integrated with Guidewire and Snowbound software, have strengthened our go-to-market strategy and sharpened our business agility.”

Property and casualty insurer

This company offers a range of property and casualty insurance solutions to customers in the United States.
 

Solution components

• FSS: Insurance - Core Insurance - Non-Life
• FSS: Insurance - Core Systems P&C
• FSS: Insurance - Front Office - Sales & Customer Service

Take the next step

To learn more about IBM ECM solutions, please read our eBook: Outhinking Content Chaos.

Snowbound has been an IBM Business Partner for over twenty years, providing flexible viewing modules that easily integrate with IBM systems and business solutions. Snowbound’s VirtualViewer HTML5 provides IBM Content Navigator users with valuable HTML5 viewing tools such as document split & merge and split screen view. Snowbound’s pure HTML5 viewer dramatically enhances current viewing technology by integrating with Content Navigator and the IBM ECM product family.

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