The convergence of cloud, open APIs, and digital has opened the door to the next wave of innovation in P&C insurance – the orchestration of customer and employee experiences across an ecosystem of solution partners, all working together to create new digital journeys. According to Forrester, “seventy-six percent of business leaders believe that current business models will be unrecognizable in the next few years, with ecosystems as the main change agent” (“New Tech: Ecosystem Management,” Q3 2021).
Yet proliferating choices and lack of information get in the way of ecosystem-driven innovation. Guidewire Marketplace is an insurance app store built specifically to connect Guidewire customers with proven and innovative brands in our industry. Apps are carefully curated by Guidewire for value, quality, and security through programs like SurePath, Ready for Guidewire, and Guidewire GO.
We believe in continuously reinventing the Marketplace experience. Over the last year we debuted our new Marketplace design, improved site navigation, and expanded app programs. In February, we added self-optimizing search and expanded filters to make navigating the largest P&C app store even easier.
What’s Next?
For insurers, pre-integrated cloud services available in Marketplace allow for faster innovation across their digital ecosystems, reducing the cost of enabling these customer experiences as integrations have traditionally taken about 50% of project effort. Guidewire Integration Framework makes it easier to develop, extend, and maintain cloud integrations. Read more from Chris Vavra, Senior Director of Product Management, in his blog, dedicated to this topic.
Innovative customers increasingly take the attitude of embracing built-in best practices that Guidewire Cloud surfaces. A Guidewire customer since 2007, California Casualty will migrate InsuranceSuite onto Guidewire Cloud beginning this year with ClaimCenter. “Moving to the cloud will provide us with the flexibility to accelerate our digital initiatives, increasing customer satisfaction and ‘stickiness’ by making their experience deeper and richer,” said Jim Kauffman, executive vice president, Strategic Business Transformation, California Casualty. “We will also be able to more easily integrate with the third-party, best-in-class insurtechs that are part of the Guidewire PartnerConnect ecosystem.”
More insurers are orchestrating customer journeys across solution providers in areas such as claims automation using multiple Marketplace apps from partners like Hi Marley, Livegenic, Mitchell, Enterprise Rent a Car, and payment providers to streamline the customer journey. "Leveraging technology and data, the claims professional of the future will have greater control over the customer experience and eliminate the need for multiple handoffs in the claims process,” according to Bill Brower, vice president of claims for LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “The result? Claims employees will experience increased job satisfaction, and carrier customers will benefit from a greater and more streamlined claims customer experience."
With fewer manual touch points, straight-through processing requires fraud checks from providers such as Friss or Shift so claims departments don’t lose the checkpoints and insights that prevent fraud. Throughout March, we are celebrating how our ecosystem partners are bringing innovation to our customers through our Marketplace. Join us online to learn more about ecosystem driven innovation – follow #GuidewireMarketplace and #TeamPartnerConnect; subscribe to our Marketplace Newsletter; and explore the many solutions in the Marketplace.