(Image credit: Stan Balik.)
Hollard (Sydney) has gone live in Australia with a new platform to administer personal motor, landlord, and home insurance lines backed by Duck Creek’s (Boston) Policy, Billing, and Data Hub solutions.
Following its appointment to underwrite three personal lines products for a major insurance broker network, Hollard had to integrate the portfolio into its newly acquired technology. A successful transition to the broker network’s platform was achieved through a specially designed engagement between Hollard, Duck Creek, and systems integration partner Xceedance (Boston).
Jamie Smith, CIO, Hollard.
The implementation was executed in just six months during the pandemic, owing to the flexibility and low-code configuration of the Duck Creek Platform, according to a statement from the vendors. With a strict timeframe to go-live, the insurer tapped trusted resources to deliver the products and services its customers have come to expect as swiftly as possible, the statement asserts.
“In a competitive and highly-regulated market, the agility and speed with which we can go to market is critical to our partners’ success and our continued growth,” comments Jamie Smith, CIO, Hollard. “Duck Creek’s low-code Platform enables us to launch products rapidly, add value to the business in a controlled fashion, and will play a vital role in automating our operational processes.”
Alignment between the Parties
Ensuring that the three parties were aligned was critical to the project, Smith continues. “We were building the backbone of our technology platform for the future, so we had to get the foundational aspects right, and everyone kept to their word and delivered what was agreed upon on time,” he elaborates. “We are very pleased to have the tools we need to support our partners and customers and we look forward to further deployments of these key technologies in the future.”
Duck Creek Policy pitches its technology as enabling general insurance companies to deliver insurance products at scale in an era of rapid, customer-centric innovation and growth. Policy supports the full policy lifecycle process with automation and workflow management capabilities, an integrated development environment for insurance products, and pre-built content. Duck Creek Billing enables carriers to offer flexible billing and payment choices based on evolving customer needs, whether offering single pay for a home-owners policy, pay-as-you-go for workers’ compensation, or a multi-installment plan for commercial policies. Data Hub, part of Duck Creek Insights, creates a single source of truth that centralises data across Duck Creek solutions, internal systems, and external data feeds.
Xceedance’s task as systems integrator was to manage the complex, multi-layered transition to the Duck Creek Platform, according to the vendors’ statement. Digital collaboration and having Xceedance personnel operating across three time zones—the U.S., India, and Australia—meant a “follow the sun” methodology enabled the project team to operate 24/7, contributing to the speed with which the integration was accomplished, the vendors report.
Shaji Sethu, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Duck Creek Technologies.
Australian First
Stephen Browne, Xceedance VP and Country Leader for Australia, referred to the project as an Australian first, implementing three product lines and a new policy system, integrated with a new communications layer and data migration, in only six months.
Shaji Sethu, Managing Director for APAC at Duck Creek Technologies, credited Xceedance with investing over and above the project requirements in personnel and other resources to ensure success. “It was an incredible effort to understand the requirements and go back and forth to build the platform in a virtual environment with time zone differences,” he comments.
“We are thrilled that Hollard has expanded our relationship by moving their new business to core systems they know they can rely on,” Sethu adds. “Empowering their team with our low-code solutions enables the carrier to focus on their customers instead of managing legacy systems and handling tedious manual processes, and we look forward to helping them with their continued success.”
Hollard will continue working with Duck Creek and Xceedance as it continues to expand the rollout of this technology across its broader business, the vendors report.