Checking in With Esurance on Emerging Tech

Phil Swift, CIO of San Francisco-based auto insurer Esurance, spoke with Insurance & Technology about what the carrier has in the works.

Insurance & Technology: Esurance recently debuted a new ad campaign with the tagline, "People when you want them, technology when you don't." Does this campaign reflect any sort of changes in the technology infrastructure at the company?

Phil Swift: The shift in our marketing approach hasn't changed how we use tech internally, but our customer base has changed and we want to appeal to them.

I&T: Your previous campaign was, I believe, more direct-response focused. You must have a lot of data from that campaign; how are you using that across the enterprise?

PS: We've built the infrastructure to capture all the data, and we provide marketing and actuaries the tools to manipulate that data. A lot of it is leveraged in the advertising campaign. At the beginning it was lets put all the data in and see how we're going to use it, and after 10 years we can really look at trends to figure out where we want to go business-wise.

I&T: Are you planning on increasing your mobile presence at all? I know you recently released an iPhone app.

PS: Customers are going to get insurance how they want. Mobile is an extension of that. We're trying to push the envelope all the time. We're on the iPhone, we're going to flip over to the Android and we want to upgrade our mobile website right now.

I&T: How else do you see mobile as helping the company?

PS: We're really continuing to expand our efforts with claims. Customers with our app can file a claim. We also see it for our adjusters, that they go out in the field and they are meeting customers who have had accidents, the more functionality we can give them in a mobile application or platform the better. They've got handhelds now where it's like sitting at their desk. There's a lot of technologies out there that are pushing the edge, and we're really excited about some of the things that we've seen.

I&T: You've recently launched a telematics pilot in Arizona. What is the state of that effort?

PS: We've got people signing up and we're going to roll out the device in 2011. The real question is how do you price it — I'm not an actuary, so there are other people working on that — but we think we've got a good product in place.

I&T: Are you planning any intiatives as far as your core systems are concerned?

PS: A rolling sort of architecture is part of our DNA. At 10 years old, we have legacy systems, but we designed it to allow evolution. The technology's moving along: Visual Basic, Dot-Net, now there's the Azul platform for the cloud computing. You have to build your systems so you can keep pace with that.

I&T: But you don't see any holes to patch up at this time.

PS: I listen to other peoples' pain points and we don't have them. When I attend conferences and hear people talk about how they're going to move to the web and all that, there's a lot they have to go through in terms of security, for example. For example, when I was at Visa working on the batch systems and the mainframe systems, security was completely different. Your emphasis isn't on checking batch and background, you're checking everything in real time. We don't really have a mixed environment, so I’m only dealing with one skill set.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio