While commercial lines insurers are dealing with evolving risks from the gig economy and microbusinesses to cyber and climate, these lines remain a profitable avenue for P&C insurers. They also play an important role in many carriers’ growth strategies.
The criticality of these types of investments was especially evident in the panel session I moderated, “From Core to Ecosystem: Unlocking Commercial Lines Growth with Guidewire Cloud,” at this year’s Guidewire Connections.
The panel featured three senior IT leaders at commercial lines carriers: Amy Bingham, VP and CIO at Pekin Insurance; Shilynn Francisco, VP of Information Services at Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho; and Supriya Sethi, Director of Software Engineering at COUNTRY Financial. They shared valuable insights on their experiences with how technology investments can drive substantial business value.
4 Ways Modern Core Systems Drive Business Value
Each of the panelists’ organizations has big goals, including substantial commercial lines direct written premium (DWP) growth over the next decade, enhancing their agent and customer experience to ensure growth, and diversifying their portfolio while benefitting from commercial lines’ lower loss ratios.
While each organization has a unique business strategy targeting its own goals, common elements emerge across successful growth initiatives. Here are some of the business outcomes they have seen from investing in modern core systems:
- Faster product enhancement and rollout
Our panelists shared that new product development is a key driver for several of their growth goals, whether it’s extending a range of products they previously offered or rolling out new products. Amy shared that her team is now able to deliver incremental improvements to products, creating value early and often and better positioning Pekin Insurance to win in new markets.
Leveraging automation and Guidewire features like Jutro Digital Platform (JDP) and Standards-Based Templates (SBT) can help insurers accelerate product delivery as well as provide a seemingly effortless experience for clients. In fact, Shilynn noted that in the six months since the Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho team went live on Guidewire Cloud, they have seen a reduction in deployment time of more than 40%.
- Simplified geographic expansion
Supriya noted that by leveraging the Guidewire ecosystem and balancing modernization efforts and technical debt management, COUNTRY Financial has been able to support its goals to increase offerings in existing geographies and support geographic expansion plans. Running geographic expansion in a repeatable factory model can help center those efforts while ensuring modernization continues at full steam. Amy noted that a factory model has greatly accelerated Pekin’s progress as it expands its commercial lines presence into seven additional states.
Similarly, Shilynn shared that Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho’s expansion into Washington, its second state, was greatly accelerated by leveraging Guidewire SBT tooling and Advanced Product Designer as well as by the insurer’s strategic partnerships. “We needed an SI partner who could say ‘This is what your competitors are doing’ and ‘This is how you can minimize issues,’” Shilynn shared. “ValueMomentum was instrumental in helping us with our expansion into Washington and figuring out how to leverage the system as it’s built to take full advantage of its capabilities.”
- Enhanced agent experience
Modernized core systems help carriers provide both captive and independent agents with an improved digital experience across all products. That experience is pivotal, Amy emphasized, since commercial lines growth depends on making it easy for agents to do business with an insurer. For carriers who work with independent agents, in particular, a good experience can be the difference between an agent choosing whether or not to work with an organization. Adopting the latest capabilities as they emerge, especially those powered by generative and agentic AI, will continue to simplify the agent experience and drive better outcomes.
Supriya highlighted JDP as a key capability COUNTRY Financial is leveraging to enhance both the customer and the agent experience, letting representatives focus more on soliciting and cultivating business leads and less time dealing with outdated technology. COUNTRY’s updated digital experience, which leverages automation, agility, and smart recommendations, has helped the insurer move from a quote time of 30 minutes in its legacy system to under 10 minutes with the modernized approach.
- More time and resources to focus on business imperatives
In addition to product rollout, geographic expansion, and agent experience, a key outcome our panelists have experienced through their core modernization investments has been that their teams simply have more time to focus on what the business needs. As Shilynn put it, “We aren’t just using Guidewire Cloud for core operations. We are looking to leverage what the cloud brings with it, like Explore, Compare, Integration Gateway, and JDP, to help us innovate and solve even more business needs.” Partnering closely with the business ensures that these tools are being used as efficiently as possible.
Amy summed up how modernizing their core systems helped Pekin with one impactful example. Due to a perfect storm of hurdles and economic pressures, her team faced a record loss in 2023. But 2023 was also the year in which Pekin finished its Guidewire Cloud upgrade. An advanced analytics-powered deep dive into their loss ratios and profitability data enabled Pekin to make some tough choices, including pausing personal lines and exiting some markets entirely. The next year, Pekin achieved its most profitable year in decades. “That turnaround wasn’t luck,” Amy said. “It was the power of being on a robust, modern platform like Guidewire, enabling us to act swiftly, boldly, and with clarity. That’s the power of a modern platform and how it has a direct impact on the bottom line.”
Core modernization has an indisputable impact on the business and the bottom line. For Guidewire customers, new and evolving capabilities and features like JDP, Marketplace Extensions, migration accelerators, and more will continue to unlock pathways to profitable growth.
Continued investments in optimizing underwriting processes, enabling streamlined third-party integrations and data-driven decision-making capabilities, along with agentic AI, will continue to help commercial lines insurers build the technology foundation required to stay ahead in a competitive market.
To learn more about how modernizing core systems is driving commercial lines success, read our case study, “Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho Drives Agility With Guidewire InsuranceSuite Modernization.”
