AAA Carolinas, an affiliate of the AAA federation of clubs, and Guidewire Software, Inc. (NYSE: GWRE), a provider of software products to Property/Casualty (P/C) insurers, today announced that AAA Carolinas has selected Guidewire InsuranceSuite™ as its underwriting, rating, policy administration, billing, and claims management platform. The company has also selected Guidewire Account Management Portal for Policyholders™ and Quote and Buy Portal for Policyholders to enhance the digital experience of its customers. AAA Carolinas will be accessing these products in a private cloud, with implementation, ongoing services, and support provided by Ernst & Young LLP, a Guidewire PartnerConnect™ Consulting Premier member.
AAA Carolinas selected Guidewire’s InsuranceSuite and Digital Portals, as well as EY’s Insurance Nexus™ strategic offering, to transform how they do business and enhance their commitment to serving their agents and policyholders. The company plans to provide an integrated foundation that works together to provide a holistic experience for their users. The company will be implementing the products across all lines of business at the same time, running new business and converting their existing business onto the new systems.
“Speed-to-market is a critically important business driver for us, as aging systems kept us operating as a ‘development shop’ and unable to address agent and policyholder demands in a timely manner,” said Jim McCafferty, president, AAA Insurance of the Carolinas. “We felt that a hosted, managed services approach would be the best one to take to enable our agents to focus on their core competency: providing our policyholders with the very best insurance and service we can offer. And with Guidewire Digital Portals being tightly integrated with InsuranceSuite, we can also easily offer self-service capabilities as an additional option to our policyholders.”
Shawn Cherry, vice president and chief information officer, AAA Carolinas, said, “We were interested in an integrated suite of products that could offer a consistent look and feel across the portfolio to our agents and employees. Guidewire InsuranceSuite and Digital Portals will enable them to be able to access one customer record across all systems and channels, providing a 360-degree view for customer relationship management.”
“We are honored that AAA Carolinas is putting their trust in EY and entering into this long-term working relationship. Our EY Insurance Nexus strategic offering will be leveraged to implement, host and manage AAA’s solution” said Rajcan Surface, Partner, Ernst & Young LLP. “We are seeing a growing interest globally in our cloud offering and establishing similar relationships with other insurance carriers.”
Guidewire’s portfolio of products and EY’s Insurance Nexus offering will enable AAA Carolinas to:
Improve staff productivity by leveraging comprehensive core system functionality and enhanced user friendliness through decreased manual processes;
Provide deeper insight into the company’s book of business due to better business intelligence and data mining; and
Lower overall expense ratio.
“AAA Carolinas is continuing an industry trend towards leveraging technology and flexible deployment models in order to enhance what they do best - provide a great experience for their policyholders, agents, and employees,” said Steve Sherry, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales, Guidewire Software. “We applaud the company’s commitment to help ensure their ability to compete in the rapidly changing insurance marketplace and we look forward to working with them and EY on this project.”