During last week’s Virtual Town Hall, Novarica senior team members Matthew Josefowicz and I were joined by five winners from this year’s Novarica Research Council Impact Awards. Each IT leader shared information about their case study, touching on business needs, biggest challenges, and the overall impact of their projects.
This year’s Impact Awards saw increased use of Agile, cloud, and APIs, but what remained constant was the key requirement of an active partnership between business and IT. Our panelists kicked off the conversation by discussing their winning case studies and how they aligned with Novarica’s Three Levers of Value: Sell More, Managing Risk Better, and Cost Less to Operate.
Amjed Al-Zoubi (Amerisure) discussed his company’s program to enhance business agility and transition to an Agile methodology. He talked about the importance of creating a partnership between enterprise leadership and IT. It was critical that everyone was at the table to change the company culture. Amjed also described the key role Agile played in bridging the gap between business units.
Brad Hildestad (COUNTRY Financial) outlined his company’s partnership with the University of Illinois and how it helped shift the company from a legacy mindset to a more modern approach to technology. He discussed how interns at COUNTRY Financial’s digital innovation lab help solve problems the company is facing today and how the program funnels IT talent from a top computer science university into the organization. Matt added that insurance has historically missed out on young, tech-savvy talent, possibly because it fails to outline the societal benefits of risk pooling fully. The importance of risk mitigation and the role it plays in the community might resonate with more graduates if they understood it better.
Stephen Cross (Merchants Insurance) shared information about his online quoting and API integration case study, remarking on the good timing of the digital underwriting release. The case study was particularly interesting because the solution had to integrate with a legacy system back-end, demonstrating how insurers can provide advanced functionality without replacing every system. Stephen said that the project has been heavily adopted by agents, leading to more agent engagement and additional requests for new capabilities.
Jim Albert (Neptune Flood) described how his company developed a rating/quoting platform leveraging AI, API calls, data prefill, and analytics. He talked about how he wanted to bring the Amazon experience to insurance and began with flood insurance, which has grown from a niche product into one highly requested by consumers. His engine can move from quote to bind in two minutes and opens roughly a thousand policies a week. Jim chalked up his success to daily scrum sessions, clear product prioritization, and enabling emerging technology.
Nestor Lopez (ProSight) discussed a nine-month upgrade to ProSight’s cloud-based billing and PAS, outlining the importance of having C-level buy-in from business and IT. He talked about how successful project management of multiple workstreams and detailed plans helped the company save over $1M and improve its speed to market to 30-45 days.
Novarica’s Impact Awards is in its ninth year. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the council members who submitted case studies and the ones who voted for winners in the digital, data and analytics, core, and IT practice categories. Novarica has published over 200 case studies through the Impact Awards, and the shared knowledge has been invaluable to the insurer community.
Beginning on 10/13, we will transition from our weekly Virtual Town Hall series to our new bi-weekly Virtual Panels series, which will be held on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. To attend a Novarica Virtual Panel on or after 10/27, please register for each event individually at https://novarica.com/events/.
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