Starting here, insurance pundit and networker extraordinaire Barry Klein talks each month to the CIOs, CTOs, and other top techs at carriers around the country. He'll get a bit of insight into what the companies are up to, and the people behind the process.
Roger Buss, Unitrin Property & Casualty
Unitrin Property and Casualty is the main operating company in the Trinity Universal group of companies, writing about $600 million of standard and preferred multi-line business through about 2,000 independent agents in 27 states. Roger Buss is the vice-president of information technology for Unitrin P&C-its top tech.
Buss has had to deal with the consolidation and conversion of the IT operations of two significant purchases Unitrin has made. Buss joined Unitrin (coming from Peoria-based RLI) in 1997, not long after it had bought the Milwaukee Insurance Group in 1995. Then it purchased the Oregon-based Valley Insurance Group in 1999.
The Milwaukee's IT operation is now gone, all its business having been successfully converted onto Unitrin's CSC (PMSC or Mynd, actually) system. Buss still has 30 employees at the Valley operation in Oregon, in addition to the 80 he has at Unitrin's home office in Dallas.
Unitrin has most recently been involved in implementing Thazar's data warehousing solution for its bread-and-butter line of business, personal auto. That, of course, is an in-facing project, designed to provide better (and faster) information to management.
For an out-facing project, Unitrin will be implementing CSC's new I-Solutions product. Again, it'll be starting with personal lines-auto and homeowners', offering Web-based connectivity to agents, including on-line rating. Despite enticing agents to its new site with such features as real-time rating, increased functionality, and other inducements, Buss stresses that they're committed to their independent agents, and will continue to support their ability to interact in various ways, including support of third-party comparative rating vendors.
All in all, enough projects to keep Roger Buss and his staff busy.
Glennon Headley, CDP, Republic
Glenn Headley is the vice president and chief information officer at Dallas-based Republic. Republic is part of Credit Suisse Financial Services, which in turn is operated by Credit Suisse Group of Switzerland.
Today, Republic is a $325 million company writing mainly in five states, with Texas accounting for about 80 percent of that volume. About 50 percent of that is specialty, 30 percent personal, and 20 percent commercial. It's achieved underwriting profits again, although the occasional catastrophe-like Hurricane Alison this year-can mess that up.
Headley's 31 years of IT experience in varied industries shows in the way he manages Republic's IT department. For example, he has instituted a written, formal process for IT projects that uses cross-functional units such as the "Focus Market Operation Team." Every project has both a user project manager and a technical project manager, and the project teams include members from each discipline (e.g., programming, underwriting, claims, etc.) to increase communication and cut down on surprises. As a result, Headley has cut his IT staff by 25 percent since 1995.
Republic's most recent IT projects include "BOb" (Business Objects), a data repository similar to a data warehouse but with some differences-it spits out weekly data extracts that are parsed into 'smart marts' for the users. There's an actuarial mart, an auto mart, a property mart, etc. Each is actually a small db2 database that the users can slice and dice any way they want. After instituting this, along with several pre-defined reports to go with it, Republic was able to eliminate two people whose sole job had been to run ad hoc reports. Now users just "ask BOb."
Another, more significant project has been the development of the RepubLink system. Based on their relationship and profitability, many agents get 'policy issuance authority' allowing them to quote and issue personal lines insurance without individual company underwriting (although policies are still underwritten on a book-of-business basis). As a result, 86 percent of Republic's new personal lines business comes in through the RepubLink system, with six percent being direct upload from agents with Applied Systems's TAM system and 80 percent directly entered on RepubLink.
The result of all this: Headley's got a calm office, a six handicap, and even has time for an occasional golf tournament although he claims work still comes first.
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