New Mexico Mutual Selects Guidewire BillingCenter

New Mexico Mutual, a leading workers' compensation carrier in the state of New Mexico, and Guidewire Software®, a provider of solutions to property and casualty and workers' compensation insurers, today announced that New Mexico Mutual has selected Guidewire BillingCenter™ as its new billing system. BillingCenter will manage the end-to-end billing process from receipt of initial billing instruction through renewal/cancellation, and will replace New Mexico Mutual's legacy billing system. Upon deployment, in Q2 2008, BillingCenter will be in use by nearly 30 internal users, across the billing, underwriting and accounting departments.

New Mexico Mutual provides access to quality, cost-effective workers' compensation insurance and services for customers in New Mexico. The company is dedicated to providing the highest quality of service to its policyholders and their employees. The billing operation is a key policyholder touchpoint and a vital core process for an insurer, so having the right system in place is crucial. Following a successful Guidewire ClaimCenter® project, New Mexico Mutual selected Guidewire BillingCenter for its comprehensive functionality, web-based technology, and the system's ease of use and maintenance. Guidewire's insurance expertise and implementation successes also factored into New Mexico Mutual's selection decision.

"Guidewire BillingCenter is a well thought out product," said Lynn Krueger, Billing and Collection manager, New Mexico Mutual. "We are excited about the business and service-level improvements BillingCenter will help us make and how easily and accurately we will be able to share information across our company, with our policyholders, and with our agents. BillingCenter will also grow with us, helping us meet future strategic and compliance objectives."

BillingCenter will provide New Mexico Mutual the tools it needs to strengthen operational effectiveness and efficiencies by modernizing and streamlining its billing process, and by ensuring consistent and accurate accounting for its policyholders and agents. BillingCenter will help New Mexico Mutual:

• Automate its billing lifecycle while employing best business practices;

• Easily train new employees;

• Readily implement system changes with in-house expertise;

• Design flexible billing, payment and delinquency plans;

• Better manage agent commissions;

• Rapidly integrate with existing claims and policy systems as well as with external payment systems;

• Greatly improve the efficiency of its Billing and Accounting departments; and

• Enhance customer service and improve responsiveness.

"We were looking for a billing system built with modern technology that could easily 'talk' with our other systems," said Tim Thackaberry, director of Information Technology, New Mexico Mutual. "From our past experience with Guidewire products, we knew that BillingCenter could be tailored to our needs and integrated into our system environment."

Guidewire BillingCenter is a 100% web-based system-of-record designed to: make it easier for insurers to manage agent commissions; automate the billing lifecycle; design flexible billing, payment and delinquency plans; and enable rapid integration with external payment systems - i.e. EFT, EBPP, check writing, payroll deduction, etc. BillingCenter is available as a standalone system or as part of the Guidewire Insurance Suite™ and can be integrated to an insurer's legacy systems or third party applications.

"We are pleased by New Mexico Mutual's selection of a second Guidewire system," said Jeff Simpson, chairman and chief executive officer, Guidewire Software. "We are very proud that their positive ClaimCenter experience influenced their decision to select Guidewire for their new billing system."