Below is the 6th 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.
To expand its product offerings, distribution and geographic presence, Nevada General Insurance, a midsize P&C insurer, replaced its Web portal for policy quoting, issuance and endorsements with a packaged solution and integrated it with the policy administration system, enabling agent and direct-to-consumer sales.
The project took eight months with two employees, three external staff from Multico, the portal provider, and one from InsureSoft, the policy admin vendor. They used Web services for integration.
Nevada General is halfway through its first rate and product change and estimates it has reduced vendor coding by 75 percent, correlating with a 30-percent reduction in annual support costs for the policy admin system. Web sales increased 24 percent, and the company is implementing a distribution channel for independent agencies this year.
Since implementation, Nevada General receives fewer customer complaints, a higher percentage of completed quotes and agents can manage quotes and their books of business online.
Novarica’s take: “Systems transformation in small companies can be a big challenge, because the resources required even for smaller products end up consuming a big proportion of the team,” said Tom Benton, principal at Novarica. “Nevada General did an impressive job of coordinating their team and their vendors to execute the project at a high level with the limited resources of a small company.”
