Special Advertising Section
Gaining a Strategic Edge
With Technology
The co-founders
: How can FirstBest help companies
of FirstBest
achieve better results in today’s market?
JOHN BeLizaiRe: Transformational catalysts are driv-
Systems, B
est’s Review
ing change. One is the underwriting profit imperative.
John Belizaire,
There is intense pressure between competition, declining premiums,
Julian Pelenur
underwriting loss and investment loss due to the recent economic
downturn. There is a revised focus on getting back to basics, getting
and Joe more business and driving underwriting profit.
Pilkerton,
Insurance agencies have also grown stronger and in many ways
explain how their
decide how a carrier is going to do business with them. Agents often
grade carriers on how technology is leveraged and the ease of clos-
software fills a ing business. There is a demand within the distribution channel for John Belizaire,
collaborative gap
more collaborative technologies. The profit imperative is renewing
Chief Executive Officer
in underwriting
focus on strategies that drive growth and efficiency. We think these
strategies fall into five buckets: market share; risk selection; automa-
and streamlines tion; precision pricing; and ease of doing business.
the process.
FirstBest is helping carriers with these strategies by focusing on
delivering technology as a real strategic weapon. We help carriers
with what they do best, developing strategies that help them write
more and write better business. We provide the platform — think of
FirstBest as the operating system for your underwriting and business
strategy.
BR: When does a company replace a legacy system like a policy
administration system, or extend its life and deploy a FirstBest solution?
JuLiaN PeLeNuR: The policy admin system is crucial, but is
focused more on fulfillment and processing than on the sales and
underwriting side. Even a new policy admin system may not enable key
initiatives such as agent collaboration or entering new markets. If it isn’t
doing what you need, then you may need to replace it. But as long as
Julian Pelenur,
the legacy system is functional, and most of these systems are still solid,
Chief Technology Officer
not to mention amortized, carriers should keep those systems humming
and deploy a front-office, modern underwriting solution like the First-
Best UMS™. They can maintain a stable back-office operation, avoid the
massive cost and risk involved in a core system replacement, but still be
able to compete and innovate.
BR: Have you measured the benefits and the results that custom-
ers have achieved?
JOe PiLKeRtON: Our first customer, ICW Group, deployed the
Listen to the
FirstBest UMS™ for workers comp and its commercial property lines.
full interview
Some of their initiatives early on were to improve the ease of doing
business — both internally and externally. They wanted to expand into
new markets, integrate existing core systems as well as third-party data
and predictive models to help streamline and drive consistency into
the underwriting process, and improve pricing and risk selection. ICW
now writes workers’ comp in over 30 states and was able to enter and
automate the small comp market. Quality submissions increased 51% in
the first year, quote production was up 71%, and bound policies were
Joe Pilkerton,
up 34.3%, while policy processing time decreased 47%.
BR
Chief Operating Officer
n For the complete audio interview, visit www.bestreview.com/tech09.html.
Best’s Review Special Section 103
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