July 2020 – Novarica’s ninth annual case study compendium includes 28 detailed examples of IT initiatives that delivered real business impact.

Each case study details business goals, project sponsors, team structure, project timeline, tools and technology used, challenges faced, success factors, and business results delivered.

The Novarica Impact Awards, voted on by more than 50 CIOs, recognized winners in four categories: digital, data/analytics, core, and IT practice or infrastructure.

2020 Winners

• Amerisure for its Agile practice group (IT practice)
• COUNTRY Financial for its college partner innovation lab (IT practice)
• Everest Insurance for its Everlink API library (core)
• Everest Re for its NLP-based incoming email automation platform (digital)
• Merchants for its online quoting system and legacy integration via API (digital)
• Neptune Flood for its AI-based flood risk rating engine (data and analytics)
• ProSight for its core cloud upgrade and legacy system retirement (core)
• Shelter for its cloud-based risk scoring application (data and analytics)

Key Points and Findings

Technology investments drive productivity and sales growth for insurers. More than half of Novarica Impact Award winners since 2016 have cited direct benefits in these areas, while about 20% cited improvements in risk management capabilities.

Agile, cloud, and APIs are common components of successful projects. These approaches are maturing and are standard parts of valuable projects.

Active business/IT partnership is the key ingredient. Every successful project incorporates active partnership with clear responsibilities and frequent communication.