Insurer Encourages Innovation via Crowd-sourcing

Below is the fifth of 13 Novarica Research Council Impact Award nominee case studies that INN is presenting, in no particular order. The awards, which will be presented at the research and advisory firm’s October 30th event in New York, honor best practices in insurance industry IT initiatives and strategy.

CAMICO, a small P&C insurer focusing on professional and employment liability for CPAs, stumbled upon a formula for innovation.

Over the past two years, CAMICO’s focus on document and process automation in sales and underwriting—along with some positive results—has spurred a formal Open Innovation Program throughout the organization.

A crowd-sourcing program at its core, IT employees—soon to be all employees across the enterprise—are asked to submit, vote and support ideas to grow the company using SharePoint. Senior business management members review submissions, and since most initiatives are small, there is no general steering committee and ad hoc meetings are scheduled as needed with the impacted business units.

CAMICO does an ROI and business impact analysis on every proposal it receives through the program and approaches these projects cautiously—as some involve unfamiliar technology or reengineered business processes—by creating prototypes to secure buy-in before moving to a full implementation.

So far the success stories include the enabling of paperless policy deliveries, e-signature capabilities, underwriting automation, ecommerce enhancements and other process changes, which have since resulted in 95 percent policy retention and 92 percent employee satisfaction among IT workers at the insurer.

To see coverage of the other Novarica's Impact Award nominees, click here.

Check back Friday to find out how Oregon Mutual deployed an iPad and cloud-based agency relationship management tool.

About the awards: Novarica’s first annual Research Council Impact Awards honor best practices in insurance industry IT initiatives and strategy. Nominees were selected across four categories—Practice, Quick Hit, Transformation and Expansion—with three nominees chosen for each (a tie in the Expansion category meant four nominees were selected). The nominees were selected by a committee from a collection of case studies drafted by Novarica from submissions by insurers.

The nominating committee included CIOs Andy Wood (Wilton Re), Dan Simpson (Trustmark), Eric Bulis (SBLI USA), Larry Fortin (Millers Mutual Group), Mark Berthiaume (Chubb), Pete Moreau (Amica), Piyush Singh (Great American Insurance Company), Reuben Broadfoot (LifeMap), Sal Abano (Tower Insurance), Stuart Tainsky (PURE) and Tim Billow (ING).

Winners will be determined by votes from the more-than-300 members of the Novarica Research Council, a moderated knowledge-sharing community of insurer CIOs and senior IT executives.

The nominees and winners will be recognized at the Novarica Research Council Impact Awards Event in New York City now on November 14th. 

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