Following an eight-month implementation exercise, American Family Insurance (Madison, Wisc.) has gone into production with FAST Insurance Components (Edison, N.J.) for new business processing and policy administration. The project enabled the launch of a new life insurance product.
Jim Maastricht, AVP, American Family.
“Our commitment to innovate is driven by our customers, which means having the systems, processes and people to address their changing needs and preferences,” comments Jim Maastricht, associate VP, American Family. “Creating a new technology ecosystem, and effectively implementing it using a more streamlined approach, is an important and exciting part of that effort.”
(Related: American Family’s Search for Functionality and Configurability Leads to FAST)
Factors influencing the success of the project include tight engagement of senior management, the use of a small dedicated implementation team, pragmatic decision making and a commitment to the Agile process, according to John Gorman, chief operating officer, FAST. “This will provide an excellent case study and a model for others to follow,” he remarks.
Gorman also credits FAST’s configurability, out-of-the-box insurance functionality and open architecture as factors in the project’s speedy and successful conclusion. “The project included a substantial amount of integration,” Gorman notes. “Given our open architecture, we were able to snap in relatively easily to American Family’s environment as well as to third-party services.”