(Mt. St. Helens, whose catastrophic eruption occurred 35 years ago today. Guidewire Live Spotlight eases identification of hazards such as proximity to active volcanos. Photo credit: John Pallister, USGS.)
Guidewire Software (Foster City, Calif.) has released a new Guidewire LiveSM app for insurance underwriters, Guidewire Live Spotlight, which the vendor describes as an instant-on hosted application that empowers underwriters to make better decisions by automating the assessment of location-based risk. The app is currently available to insurers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.
“We are excited about how Guidewire Live Spotlight will support our underwriters in visualizing the geospatial and natural peril exposures associated with a property/location being underwritten and to see the other risks that we underwrite in the vicinity,” comments Alastair Latimer, Insurance Systems Manager, Guild Insurance (Melbourne, Australia). “We view this as a useful extension of our Guidewire investment and expect it to deliver more consistent and better informed desk-based underwriting decisions.”
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Eugene Lee, VP, Data and Analytics, Guidewire Software.
The tool is designed to ease underwriters’ search for information in relevant external data sources in support of accurate risk selection and, ultimately, greater profitability. Underwriting challenges addressed by Spotlight include: location inaccuracies, inconsistencies in the underwriting process within the organization, and the need to make more transparent decisions, according to a Guidewire statement.
Company-Specified Algorithms
The vendor says that Guidewire Live Spotlight brings together relevant data from internal and external sources, applies company specified algorithms to generate peril-based alerts, and presents the evaluation results to the underwriter visually for detailed interaction. Those capabilities enable underwriters to see at-a-glance which policies are in a high risk area such as a flood or crime zone, enabling them to more accurately underwrite the risk, the vendor reports.
“Spotlight has been designed and expressly built to aid the task of Property/Casualty insurance underwriting,” said Eugene Lee, Vice President, Data and Analytics, Guidewire Software. “It works in concert with Guidewire PolicyCenter and lets insurers define their own risk data sources and assessment criteria. We are excited to be extending our analytics capabilities to improve the quality of underwriting decisions.”