WAYNE MUTUAL TURNS TO RIS FOR OUTSOURCING RELIEF

When Wooster, OH-based Wayne Mutual Insurance Co.'s long-time outsourcer informed the carrier that it no longer planned to offer outsourcing services, the small writer of property and casualty insurance had to move quickly to find a new outsourcing provider.

"We had been outsourcing with the company for 25 years," says Wayne Mutual Insurance's president, Tod Carmony, who would not name the company. "We are accustomed to outsourcing and we know what to expect" when looking for a new outsourcing partner.

At the beginning of this year Carmony and his team, including Tim Suppes, vice president of IT, selected Results International Systems (RIS, Dublin, OH) mainly because RIS could provide the company with a total outsourced solution in the required timeframe. Also, adds Carmony, RIS was in the right place at the right time. "We found them because I have seen their ads and saw them at trade shows and because their sales person kept leaving me messages on my voicemail," Carmony jokes. "Suddenly we had an urgent need for outsourcing."

In less than 12 months, Wayne Mutual Insurance has completed outsourcing the processing for all of its lines of business to RIS' outsourcing solution. "We went into production with our first phase in May 2002, quickly completed our conversion, and are now in full production with RIS," reports Carmony. Currently more than 10,000 policyholders have been moved to the RIS processing environment. Eventually, more than 30,000 policyholders will be supported.

Wayne Mutual signed the agreement with RIS in January of this year and quickly moved to meet its outsourcing deadline by the end of 2002, according to Don Goodenow, director insurance consulting and marketing, RIS. "Wayne Mutual wanted to shift off of its existing systems by the end of 2002 and RIS helped them to do it with a phased approach," meaning that Wayne Mutual converted certain lines of business to the RIS outsourcing solution over the course of the year.

Suppes says that Wayne Mutual felt comfortable outsourcing its entire operation to RIS because RIS' outsourcing solution is based on what he describes as a proven system. "We needed a complete solution, not just rating," Suppes says. "RIS bases their system on Fiserv SIS, and customizes it for their own needs."

In addition to providing end-to-end processing for all of Wayne Mutual's product lines (including auto, homeowners, mobile homeowners, rental, personal umbrella, all farm lines of business and some commercial lines offerings) RIS has also developed and hosts the carrier's Web site.

Since Wayne Mutual had such a short deadline, it didn't implement any of what Carmony calls the "sporty" features of RIS. "Right now we are focused on getting things up and running," he says. "Our next step it to Web-enable everything, including developing a Web front-end so agents can do information entry from their office."

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio