Below is the 10th of 11 Novarica Research Council Impact Award nominee case studies, which INN is presenting in no particular order. The awards will be presented at the research and advisory firm’s August 21st event in New York and honor best practices in insurance industry IT initiatives and strategy.
Prior to the implementation of XL Group's Global Underwriting Platform, underwriting processes were commonly paper-based, risk data was not stored, and workflows were unstructured. With the solution, underwriters experience improved collaboration, access to data and the ability to integrate with policy processing systems to evaluate and price a risk, as well as create a quote proposal and policy documentation.
The quantitative payoff is an expected 40-percent improvement in underwriter productivity, measured in annual premium per underwriter.
The initial release of the system to support general liability underwriting required about a year. Over the next two years, the company plans to add additional lines of business to the platform.
Rolling out the system on a product-by-product basis created challenges for underwriters who offer multiple products to a single client. The team designed workflows and built technology to allow for quote proposals from external processes to be merged into a single proposal.
XL bought and configured a common underwriting desktop software package, FirstBest Front Office Suite. The underwriting software then integrated with various policy administration systems required to support the wide range of products offered.
Novarica’s Take: “XL Group’s underwriting platform is not only increasing productivity, but it’s preparing the company to support the next generation of underwriters. This project captures current process and content knowledge while laying the groundwork to incorporate new data and analytics sources into their environment to improve productivity.” —Martina Conlon, Principal at Novarica
