Guidewire: achieving your digitisation goals amid COVID-19

If most of your employees are working out of their homes amid the COVID-10 pandemic, how do you keep them engaged and innovating? How do you seize the opportunity to push forward with your digitisation goals?

Reshma Mani, senior director, product management claims at Guidewire, will tackle these questions and many more as part of a panel discussion during the first-ever Claims Innovation Virtual Event organised by Intelligent Insurer, later this week.

Taking place at 11:00am–12:00am ET on Friday, October 30, the panel “Achieve Business Continuity in a Post COVID-19 World: Establish the Optimum Operating Model for Your Remote Workforce” will be moderated by Cathy Ellwood, founder of Ellwood Enterprises.

Companies across the world have had to introduce flexible working and remote options, while introducing new technology and IT systems to ensure they work.

“At Guidewire, we were able quickly to make the transition to working remotely. In our product development organisation, it’s very important to be able to collaborate across groups such as product management, user experience, and engineering as we build products,” said Mani.

She added that Guidewire gave its employees a grant to purchase home office equipment to help adjust to the new-normal work environments. The company is also actively exploring virtual collaboration tools, such as Miro, an online whiteboard platform.

For insurance carriers in particular, customer behaviour is changing.

“Studies show that insureds have been driving less due to the pandemic, and our customers have seen a rise in digital interactions as a preferred means of interacting with insurers,” said Mani. “We’ve also seen an acceleration of claims transformation projects due to the pandemic.”

Panellists will also discuss how listeners can seize the opportunities presented by the pandemic to build a flexible claims system and push forward with their digitisation and touchless claims goals.

The next generation

At its annual customer conference in November, Guidewire is launching its vision for the next generation of claims, based on trends it’s seeing, for faster claims resolution.

“I chose this topic for Claims Innovation USA because it would allow me to discuss part of this vision and its effect on claims processing, claims technology changes on the horizon driven by COVID-19, and how Guidewire is helping insurance companies deliver on their claim transformation projects,” Mani explained.

Panellists will also debate the long-term societal shifts in the new world of work, the opportunities and pitfalls these shifts will create (in particular for diversity), and whether we can say goodbye to a culture of presenteeism.

Mani added: “Some long-term trends we see happening are the use of analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies to enable the faster processing of claims. These not only improve customer satisfaction, but also lower the cost of claims operations.

“For example, our customers report an increase in the use of mobile channels to upload photos to jump-start a claim and investments in virtual inspection technologies, as claimants were not comfortable with an adjuster visiting them in person in every instance,” she explained.

Based in California, software company Guidewire combines digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver its platform for property and casualty insurance carriers as a cloud service. More than 380 insurers, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As to what makes Guidewire stand out from its competitors, the senior director noted that market research company JD Powers released its 2020 US Auto Insurance Claim Satisfaction Survey earlier this month.

“The study is based on responses from 11,055 auto insurance customers who settled a claim within the past six months prior to taking the survey. A majority of the customers who gave the highest scores are Guidewire ClaimCenter customers,” according to Mani.

She added: “Guidewire has the most trusted claims management solution in the P&C industry, and the proven capability to transform claims-servicing operations for insurers worldwide.

“We have been helping customers deliver great claims customer experiences for over 15 years.”

The  virtual Claims Innovation conference, which was originally scheduled to be held in Miami, will be held across three days (October 26, 28, and 30) and feature over 30 speakers from across the insurance ecosystem, including personal lines, commercial lines, brokers, and new entrants. More than 1,000 attendees are expected throughout the week.