Encova decided to take the risk and move forward with transforming its personal lines. Development began in 2019. It took only 18 months to launch Encova’s first product on the new personal lines platform.
Reinventing Personal Lines
“We knew we had the infrastructure in place from an operational, organizational, financial, technology, and administrative perspective,” said Kessler.
As part of the transformation, Encova introduced a number of integrations because it expanded the number of products to price and underwrite.
Encova leadership credits Guidewire’s ecosystem for the success.
“This was a very collaborative effort across the entire spectrum of the organization,” said Matt Wilcox, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Personal Lines. “With the increased number of integrations, we certainly had to take advantage of the Guidewire accelerators. Integrations in the previous world would have been impossible for us because we had six different legacy systems as opposed to one platform.”
Since launching, Encova’s new business sales have increased. The straight-through-processing rate climbed.
Empowering Independent Agents
By implementing digital capabilities and rebranding the agent portal as Encova Edge, the insurer was able to roll out a variety of features and functionality to agents that were not possible before. With CustomerEngage, Encova was able to deliver a state-of-the-art digital service for policyholders for all lines to enable access to policy information, billing history, claims, FNOL, and documents.
Among the many benefits afforded Encova, InsuranceSuite has enabled the company to standardize underwriting, policy administration, billing, and claims management on a cohesive technology platform. Further, Encova can develop and execute best practices to deliver high levels of service to its independent agents and customers by empowering them with digital self-service claims, policy servicing, and quoting capabilities.
As Encova has continued to grow with Guidewire, it saw a need to expand the relationship even further. In 2024, the insurer announced it was moving to InsuranceSuite on Guidewire Cloud.