PURE Prepared for Sandy Using Cloud Based Capabilities

PURE will be able to maintain uninterrupted processing, communications and remote work through cloud-based policy administration, claims, telephony and call center.

White Plains, N.Y.-based PURE has been working through the weekend to prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy’s arrival. The high-value P&C carrier insures properties on the coast and inland, and its headquarters’ location places it in the path of the storm. CIO Stuart Tainsky shared with Insurance & Technology how PURE has prepared for Sandy. The closing of New York’s MTA Metro North railroad means that many of PURE’s associates cannot reach their place of work. However, that will have no impact on the company’s operations, by Tainsky’s account. “All of our systems are cloud-based, and are hosted and managed to help us ensure that business is not interrupted for our agent partners or our members,” Tainsky relates.

Insurers, public safety officials and others have expressed concerns that New York metropolitan area inhabitants who made it through Hurricane Irene unscathed in Aug. 2011 will not take Sandy sufficiently seriously, but PURE is taking no chances.

“We’re not finding that with our members,” reports Stuart Tainsky, CIO of high-value property-casualty insurer PURE (White Plains, N.Y.). The carrier has been communicating actively with its policyholders via email and through its Member Advocates.

“It’s a unique service that we provide through our risk management team,” Tainsky explains. “Members are assigned a Member Advocate to help provide loss prevention advice and solutions, project manage claims and losses, and ensure that all elements of a claim are handled properly on behalf of the member.”

More on Hurricane Sandy: I&T editor Nathan Golia reports from the water's edge.

PURE will be able to maintain uninterrupted communications and remote work through its cloud-based and fully VoiP Shore-Tel network and 8x8 call center systems, according to Tainsky. “Our employees simply log onto a web portal and change where their phone rings from incoming calls,” he says. “The system can reroute calls to home or mobile phone, and can reach anybody working from home or elsewhere.”

The insurer’s OneShield Dragon policy administration and Guidewire ClaimCenter claims systems are both hosted externally through a private cloud arrangement with Andover, Mass.-based NaviSite. The systems are also tightly integrated, according to Tainsky. "At time a member calls to report a claim, we already have all of their policy information loaded into the claim system, ready to go," he says. "It's a huge advantage in providing responsive, timely claim service: we can just ask which car or home they’re calling in reference to, and quickly get to the heart of the matter without having to take a lot of information.”

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