Two weeks ago, Guidewire hosted its annual Connections conference in Nashville, Tennessee, bringing together insurers, partners, and other industry leaders. ValueMomentum, a gold sponsor for the event as well as a Guidewire PartnerConnect Consulting partner, earned several recognitions and participated in thought-provoking discussions on emerging trends in cloud technology and how to maximize the value of Guidewire’s core insurance platforms.
The ValueMomentum team pictured at Guidewire Connections 2023
This year, the conference theme was “power of community.” Mike Rosenbaum, Guidewire CEO, emphasized that community is foundational to P&C insurers’ success. In the digital era, he said, insurers need an ecosystem of symbiotic relationships across insurers, vendors, and customers that deliver embedded and connected value.
Key Insights
Leaders from Guidewire shared major updates within their business. These updates included recently doubling the company’s number of customers; increasing the number of partners to 190 and being on track to reach 200 or more before next year; and testing autopilot functions with Innsbruck (Guidewire’s most recent cloud release) for workflow automation, testing new capabilities to further reduce operating costs, and building digital-native applications.
The following insights emerged across keynote speakers and discussions.
Interconnected, modular, scalable core services are the new standard for P&C core platforms
Rosenbaum noted the unique challenges the insurance industry faced this year, from the rising costs of reinsurance to the changing nature of highly specialized risks, such as climate change and cybersecurity. Insurers struggle to balance reliability, extensibility, and innovation, he said. In order to achieve the right balance, insurers need interconnected, modular, and scalable platforms in the cloud to deliver core services at triple the usual speed. Insurers also need the right partnerships and technical guidance to seamlessly meld those systems within their infrastructure.
Generative AI is set to become increasingly powerful
In its present form, generative AI won’t replace our current methods and operations, said Laura Drabik, VP of business innovation at Guidewire. However, there is substantial potential for incremental advancements in this area.
She added that generative AI could be utilized for generating code, analyzing claims data to glean product insights, and uncovering new business opportunities in commercial lines.
The conference included a demonstration to showcase generative AI’s capabilities such as tracking a policy’s list of losses. Guidewire’s platforms function as a repository of information. Generative AI could be used, for example, to pull up relevant customer or policy data automatically. In order to be able to equip and utilize such AI capabilities, Drabik observed, carriers must transition to a modern core platform.
Continuous cloud innovation is critical for safety and connection
Diego Devalle, Chief Product Development Officer at Guidewire, outlined the company’s ambitious vision to have all customers on the latest cloud release while minimizing IT cost and risk to pave the way for more innovation and tap into scaled capabilities to orchestrate business outcomes. For insurers, this means not building a system from the bottom up, but adopting a platform based on specific business priorities, he explained.
As the number of claims being processed on cloud-based systems has increased to up to 81%, insurers will need to innovate in order to handle use cases such as reducing claims timelines, increasing automation for low severity claims, externalizing cloud rules engines, and creating new severity score predictions.
Continuous Value through ValueMomentum’s Partnership with Guidewire
At the conference, ValueMomentum presented our most recent specialty and commercial lines reference solution, which enables accelerated implementation and consistent delivery of the Guidewire Cloud Platform.
Key features of this framework include quick-start product definitions for select specialty lines coverages; intelligent intake automation for new business; and a repository of tools such as use cases for functional, system, forms, and rate testing.
ValueMomentum is recognized with a Passion for Excellence Award at Guidewire Connections 2023. From left: Guidewire’s Group Vice President of Alliances Lisa Walsh, ValueMomentum’s VP Naren Sivakumar and EVP & CMO Abhijeet Jhaveri, and Christina Colby, Guidewire’s Chief Customer Officer.
ValueMomentum’s ongoing commitment to growing expertise in Guidewire Cloud earned us the Passion for Excellence Award at the conference. ValueMomentum also won the Client Innovation Award for helping Westfield Specialty with the integration of Guidewire Insurance Suite to build a modular and scalable cloud-native submission system to launch the insurer’s specialty line of business.
ValueMomentum customer Westfield Specialty Group is recognized for its success on Guidewire Cloud with a 2023 Innovation Award.
ValueMomentum continues to expand our specialty and commercial lines reference solutions for Guidewire Cloud Platform to help insurers tap into the expanding specialty market while also lowering costs and reducing risk.
As the conference theme of community suggests, continuous collaboration and exchange across solution vendors, carriers, and customers will be critical to transcend the challenges disrupting the industry and tap into an ecosystem of market opportunities for growth. This year’s Connections conference once again gathered professionals across positions and specialties to share knowledge and camaraderie for long-term success.
Want to learn how you can deploy Guidewire Cloud for your core systems? Check out our Guidewire Implementation Services for more.