“Union Mutual can focus on moving forward in new lines and new states and get input from agents by asking: How do we make this work better for you? Then we’re able to quickly implement those tweaks and updates in the InsuranceNow system. ”
Gary Ouellette, Executive Vice President
Union Mutual
Union Mutual began operations in 1874, and in the 140 plus years since its founding, the company has grown to provide Personal and Commercial lines of insurance to all six New England states and New York through independent agents. Like most insurers, Union Mutual routinely reviewed its business operations and its capability to be able to do what it does best. At one point, this revealed the need to further review its dated technologies and processes.
As part of its technology overhaul, in 2012 the company chose Guidewire InsuranceNow as its core systems platform, completing implementation of the full suite of functionality for claims, policy, billing, and reporting data as a self-managed solution within eight months, under budget.
After implementation, Union Mutual saw host of benefits, such as improved system performance times for agents, policyholders, and internal users; straight-through processing improvements that enable agents to self-serve and process over 70% of all Personal lines endorsements immediately; a decrease in analytics and query run times from 18 hours to a few minutes; and a 60% growth in direct written premium and 35% growth in surplus.
Leveraging these successes prompted the company to look at further ways to improve operations, and in 2016 Union Mutual moved its InsuranceNow platform to the cloud. “The reason for that is around sustainability, scalability, and—truthfully—security,” said Gary Ouellette, Executive Vice President at Union Mutual.
Moving to the cloud has given Union Mutual another type of security: peace of mind. “We have some really bright people here who know technology, but we did not want to have that become the focus of our company,” says Bob MacLeod, Assistant Vice President of Information Systems at Union Mutual. “We strive to be an insurance company that has strong technology. We wanted to leave the system in the hands of the people who not only knew technology but knew where technology was going in the future and could help get us there.”
After moving to InsuranceNow in the cloud, Union Mutual began saving about 20% annually over the cost to maintain that infrastructure, software support, and hardware internally. While cost wasn’t the key driver of the move, it was impactful, according to the company, because it represented providing its users with stable, easy-to-use functionality.
“One is just absolute consistency of performance for our agents, our insureds, and our users,” said Ouellette. “The other area is daily cycle processing times, which have shrunk noticeably.”
Ouellette added that, with InsuranceNow, Union Mutual can focus on moving forward in new lines and new states, and being able to get input from agents by asking: How do we make this work better for you? “Then we’re able to quickly implement those tweaks and updates into the InsuranceNow system,” he said.
