Capital Insurance Group (CIG; Monterey, Calif.), a regional property and casualty insurer serving the Western U.S. since 1898, has selected Guidewire PolicyCenter as its underwriting and policy administration solution. CIG has also selected Guidewire Rating Management and Guidewire Client Data Management. PwC, a member of Guidewire’s PartnerConnect certified implementation partner program will lead the implementation project.

CIG’s selection of PolicyCenter grew out of the carrier’s earlier selection of Guidewire BillingCenter earlier in 2014. By consolidating its three existing policy systems, the company hopes to simplify its infrastructure, streamline business processes and gain the flexibility needed to remain competitive in an evolving market, according to a Guidewire statement. CIG will deploy PolicyCenter across all lines of business in a phased implementation approach, beginning with its BOP and commercial auto lines.

Freeing-Up Underwriters

“Our team was very impressed with Guidewire’s track record of effective implementations in the marketplace. We didn’t see that level of success with any other system,” comments Walter Bennett, VP, Underwriting, CIG. “With PolicyCenter, we’re deploying a technology that will free our underwriters up to focus on what only they can do–have conversations with agents about the nuances of risks.   With improvements in overall efficiencies and focused resource deployment, we’ll be able to improve the overall level of service to our agents and insureds through more agile product development and faster turnaround times.  ”

Benefits CIG expects from implementing PolicyCenter, according to the vendor, include the ability to:

• Enhance business agility by enabling product changes to be made more quickly and easily without the delays of custom IT coding;
• Leverage automated underwriting rules and real-time functionality to eliminate manual processes ; and
• Standardize policy administration on a single, consistent platform for agents and policyholders.
  

  Rads Mydam, CIO, Capital Insurance Group.

“From a technical perspective, our legacy policy systems were creating a bottleneck each time we needed to update or enhance our systems,” comments Rads Mydam, CIO and VP, Information Technology, CIG. “It can take up to four months to make changes in the current system. We’re looking forward to increasing our agility as a result of PolicyCenter’s easy configurability and giving business users more freedom to modify products and services as needed.”

CIG insures Personal Auto, Homeowners, Farmowners, Condo Owners, Vacation Property, Renters, Apartment Building Owners, and many kinds of Commercial and Agricultural Auto and Property. The more than 115 year-old company manages personal, business, and agriculture risks underwritten by its affiliate companies: California Capital Insurance Company, Eagle West Insurance Company, Nevada Capital Insurance Company, and Monterey Insurance Company.