Guidewire Announces 2019.1 Release of P&C Insurance Industry Platform to Accelerate Insurer Growth

Business Wire

HIGHLIGHTS:

New Guidewire Cyence™ for Small Business provides Workers’ Compensation insurers with internet-scale data collection on small businesses to enable profitable, scalable, and streamlined digital underwriting processes.

New innovations in Guidewire Predictive Analytics™ make it easier to import and operationalize models built with third-party software.

New Guidewire InsuranceNow™ Data Service provides near real-time reporting data.

Enhanced navigation across all digital applications, faster quoting experiences, stronger agent and broker enablement, plus the ability to quote and bind Workers’ Compensation insurance policies.

Seven Guidewire PartnerConnect™ Solution Partners have signed up to use the new Guidewire DevConnect™ developer environment to create plug and play Ready for Guidewire add-ons for ClaimCenter.

FOSTER CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Guidewire Software, Inc. (NYSE: GWRE), provider of the industry platform Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers rely upon, today announced the 2019.1 release of Guidewire InsurancePlatform™. This latest release supports insurers’ imperatives to optimize operations, be more digital, use data in new ways, and innovate quickly. Underlying these business drivers is a general theme to simplify and de-risk insurers’ IT environments.

“Insurers today are driving towards more continuous delivery of technology enabled capabilities to their internal and external stakeholders. Increased release cadence of vended core systems like Guidewire InsurancePlatform, will help insurers address increasing time to market demands and improved upgrade experience,” said Martina Conlon, executive vice president, Research and Consulting and practice leader for property/casualty at Novarica. “Workers’ Compensation specific capabilities in this release will address additional needs of the very active Workers’ Compensation market.”

Guidewire InsurancePlatform has been designed to power the P&C insurance business, in support of the following key insurer imperatives:

Optimize operations: InsurancePlatform optimizes operations by embedding best practices and efficiency into insurer core processes. This provides standardization and scalability, while also enabling insurers to reimagine what’s possible.

InsuranceNow* 2019.1 contains usability improvements to some First Notice of Loss, Claims, and Billing areas of the system to provide a more consistent and intuitive user experience.
InsuranceNow Studio* is designed to allow developers to manage the configuration source using familiar tools, while presenting the business relevant portions of the configuration in an intuitive non-technical user interface.
- 2019.1 expands Studio’s scope to include additional underwriting features and support for claims configuration.
- New Server Control features for restarting InsuranceNow to pick up configuration changes more quickly, enabling more agile business change.

Use data in new ways: InsurancePlatform helps insurers drive smart decisions across the insurance lifecycle by leveraging scientific techniques and delivering actionable insights at the time key decisions are being made:

New Guidewire Cyence for Small Business is an on-demand risk assessment engine for Workers’ Compensation, using machine learning to capture non-obvious data about a business at the point of underwriting. It also unlocks meaningful opportunities in fine-tuned segmentation for prospecting, and more risk differentiation for pricing.
New innovations in Guidewire Predictive Analytics make it easier to import and operationalize models built with third-party software, prevent overfitting of certain variables, allow for gradual adoption of model recommendation, and monitor overall impact on claims, pricing, and submissions.
The InsuranceNow Data Service* is a brand new microservice developed that provides near real-time reporting data in a centralized Amazon Redshift data warehouse.

Improve digital engagement: To meet rising digital expectations, InsurancePlatform 2019.1 helps insurers increase digital engagement by digitizing every interaction and delivering a satisfying, consumer grade, omnichannel experience.

Provides more streamlined quoting experiences for customers, agents, brokers, and customer service representatives (CSRs) through enhanced quote flow navigation that enables users to move back and forth in quote flows while maintaining the integrity of the data submitted, thus improving the speed and efficiency of the quoting process.
Expands functionality in Guidewire ProducerEngage™ and Guidewire ServiceRepEngage™ to give agents, brokers, and CSRs the ability to quote and bind Workers’ Compensation insurance out of the box. Agents, brokers and CSRs can also drag and drop spreadsheets to pre-fill information for complex quotes.
Innovative error handling in ProducerEngage and ServiceRepEngage notifies agents, brokers, and CSRs of data entry errors and qualification issues as they occur, allowing them to address issues right away to save time and avoid working on quotes that cannot be bound. The alerts fall into three categories: error messages, warnings, and underwriting approval alerts.

Innovate quickly: To empower insurers to respond to changing competition and new entrants, InsurancePlatform enables innovation while reducing complexity of integrations with promising insurtechs as well as established players.

Insurers can choose from 100 Guidewire validated third party solution integrations currently available for download in the Guidewire Marketplace.
PartnerConnect Solution partners added since the October 2018 release include: ACI Worldwide, Advanced Remarketing Services, Franco Signor, Mirror Technologies, Omadi, Ontellus, TruePic, and Zipwhip.
In the past four months, 7 Solution Partners have signed up to use the new Guidewire DevConnect developer environment to create plug and play Ready for Guidewire add-ons for ClaimCenter: Advanced Remarketing Services, Livegenic, Mirror Technologies, Omadi, Ontellus, TruePic and WeGoLook.

Simplify IT complexity: InsurancePlatform reduces IT complexity and minimizes the operational burden with key infrastructure improvements to InsuranceSuite.

The Policy Migration Tool reduces the cost and risk associated with legacy policy migration into Guidewire PolicyCenter™ by providing a supported tool that simplifies the process.
The InsuranceSuite Behavior Testing Framework promotes better collaboration between business and IT by enabling business analysts to create InsuranceSuite test scenarios in everyday language.

“InsurancePlatform releases remain focused on simplifying the technology that supports insurers, while improving digital engagement across the customer lifecycle, enabling insurers to achieve their business imperatives,” said Ayan Sarkar, principal, InsurancePlatform, Guidewire. “2019.1 unveils exciting new products, features, and tools in support of these objectives.”

Guidewire InsuranceSuite™ has been positioned as a Leader, and Guidewire InsuranceNow has been positioned as a Challenger in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for P&C Core Platforms, North America¹. Guidewire Software has also been positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Non-Life-Insurance Platforms, Europe².

* Note that not all products are available in every geography. Guidewire customers can get more information from their Account Executive.

¹ Gartner, Magic Quadrant for P&C Core Platforms, North America, Jeff Haner, October 9, 2018

² Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Non-Life Insurance Platforms, Europe, Sham Gill, 26 November 2018

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About Guidewire Software

Guidewire delivers the industry platform that Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers rely upon to adapt and succeed in a time of accelerating change. We provide the software, services, and partner ecosystem to enable our customers to run, differentiate, and grow their business. We are privileged to serve more than 350 companies in 32 countries. For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com and follow us on twitter: @Guidewire_PandC.

NOTE: All products mentioned in this announcement are Guidewire products. For information about Guidewire’s trademarks, visit https://www.guidewire.com/legal-notices.