Despite Downturn, Insurers Remain Committed to Core Systems Evolution
“We’re seeing more movement than last year,” George says. Those carriers that are moving on policy admin capabilities are looking to tackle a variety of business challenges to position themselves for continued growth and an advantageous place in the market — such as speed-to-market plays on the life and annuities side, according to George.
The Hanover Is Aggressive About Growth
Positioning for the future is very much on the mind of The Hanover Insurance Group’s Clifton. “We’re trying to expand into new territories all the time and have created innovative products over the past five years that appeal to the agents, so we believe we’re in a unique position,” he comments. “This is an opportune time for us to be very aggressive about our growth in the market.”
To the extent that economic conditions may cause a lengthening of sales cycles, Clifton sees an opportunity to work more collaboratively with vendors. “We see it as a chance to work with the actual providers to innovate their capabilities faster,” he says.
The need to do so is pressing, as the carrier tackles the challenges of legacy transformation on the road to more-flexible, agent-friendly systems, according to Clifton. “The most important capability I’m looking for is interoperability,” he relates.
Clifton resists the notion of operating in a buyer’s market, however, preferring to characterize his key vendor relationships as a “consultative selling model.” Vendors are just as concerned about using their scarce resources to good effect as carriers are, and they are taking a more strategic view these days, he believes. “They’ve gotten as smart as we have about what the win really is here — it’s not about the sale,” he says. “The software element is only one piece; they need strong implementations and reference accounts.”
The Hanover Group is working with vendor partners such as OneShield (Westborough, Mass.) and Guidewire (San Mateo, Calif.) to accelerate development of targeted solution capabilities, Clifton shares. The insurer, he explains, thus gets to its functional destination earlier and more completely, and the vendor can take a suite of proven functionality to the market.
OneShield provides the policy administration platform of choice for The Hanover’s growth area of specialty business, according to Clifton. “We’re trying to get to a single commercial lines operating model with specialty at the core,” he reports. “OneShield is the underpinning for the platform capabilities we want in terms of front-end ease of use.”
The carrier uses Guidewire for billing and claims, including a February 2009 launch of the vendor’s ClaimCenter solution for The Hanover’s property business, Clifton adds. With the vendor’s technology firmly rooted in The Hanover’s auto and property business, Clifton acknowledges, the question arises as to why the carrier wouldn’t select Guidewire for policy admin.
“In fact, we are in lockstep with Guidewire in terms of product development around policy,” he says. “As they mature their product set, the presence of billing, commissioning and policy in one central, interoperable model has a huge value proposition for us. If their story continues to be what it has been, I think everybody has to look up and ask why they wouldn’t want a single customer model built into a claim, account, billing, output and policy scenario.”
Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio
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