Employers Direct Insurance Company Selects Guidewire ClaimCenter

Employers Direct Insurance Company (EDIC), a specialty California workers' compensation insurance carrier, and Guidewire Software®, a leading provider of solutions to property and casualty and workers' compensation insurers, today announced that EDIC has selected Guidewire ClaimCenter® as its new claims system. ClaimCenter will support the end-to-end workers' compensation claim handling process for the entire claims organization.

EDIC is an emerging leader in California workers' compensation, guided by a team with over thirty years' experience in the market. EDIC is focused on dramatically reducing loss ratios through aggressive management of claims, loss control, and fraud. A core element of the company's overall strategy is to adopt best-in-class technology to obtain maximum operational efficiencies. After an evaluation of available claims systems, EDIC determined that Guidewire ClaimCenter provided the most powerful, comprehensive, and flexible system for managing workers' compensation claims today.

"Our organization is dedicated to continuous improvement in our claim processes to deliver superior customer service to employers and claimants," said Joyce Schulman, vice president of claims, Employers Direct Insurance Company. "Guidewire ClaimCenter gives us the flexibility to meet our unique requirements and to support our business as it grows and evolves over the years to come."

ClaimCenter provides critical support to EDIC's claims organization in meeting several of its most important objectives. The new claims system will enable EDIC to:

• Capture all information required for California workers' compensation claims

• Streamline the production of required workers' compensation forms and reports

• Automatically monitor and flag state-mandated deadlines in the claim process

• Systematically enforce EDIC's preferred claim handling guidelines

• Scale the claims organization to accommodate rapid growth, without incurring additional fixed costs

"Guidewire ClaimCenter supports our strategy of deploying world-class technology for our core operations", said Joseph A. Cardenas, executive vice president and chief information officer, Employers Direct Insurance Company. "Because ClaimCenter is accessed via the Internet, we can provide a modern claim handling experience while minimizing our fixed costs."

Guidewire ClaimCenter enables innovation in claims, using flexible business rules to optimize the claim process and automatically monitoring all operations to catch exceptions and eliminate errors. Claims executives can define and enforce their preferred claim handling practices, and can refine those practices over time. ClaimCenter is available both as a standalone claims system and as a set of individual components to complement any insurer's existing systems. The system's modern architecture, web client, XML-based configuration, and web services support ensure lower total cost of ownership in any environment, whether deployed locally or hosted externally.

"We share EDIC's innovative, dynamic approach to the insurance industry and commitment to state-of-the-art technology", said John Raguin, chief executive officer, Guidewire Software. "We look forward to supporting EDIC's continuing growth in the years to come."