The Earthquake Commission of New Zealand Selects Guidewire

The Earthquake Commission of New Zealand (EQC), the government-owned Crown Entity responsible for providing residential natural disaster coverage throughout New Zealand (with over NZ$5.4 Billion in its Natural Disaster Fund), and Guidewire Software®, a leading provider of solutions to general insurers, today announced that EQC has selected Guidewire ClaimCenter. EQC will replace its current legacy claims system with Guidewire ClaimCenter for the end-to-end claims management of all claims, including those resulting from catastrophic events.

Deployment of Guidewire ClaimCenter is anticipated to enable EQC to be prepared for disasters occurring with little or no advance notice. EQC has a target of being able to register over 150,000 claims within three months of a disaster and settling 60,000 claims within a year. Because many of the users would be claims adjusters trained in the wake of a disaster, the system selected needed to be easy to learn and capable of supporting up to 3,000 concurrent users.

“Guidewire’s ClaimCenter solution is a great fit with EQC’s core system needs, but also ensures that we are prepared for a worst case scenario,” said EQC’s David Middleton, general manager. “We need a robust, scalable application we can rely on at our time of greatest challenge – should a large disaster strike New Zealand. Whilst we normally have just a couple of thousand claims per year, we could suddenly face over 100,000 from a single event. We feel ClaimCenter’s scalable architecture will give us the reliability we need as well as the ease-of-use needed to quickly get new adjusters trained and productive.”

Guidewire ClaimCenter will enable EQC to:

• Shorten training times and increase productivity through system driven claims handling workflows;

• Maintain claims adjusting excellence and operational efficiencies at times of heavy demand;

• Provide real-time comprehensive information to claimants; and

• Streamline and reduce IT maintenance efforts by moving to a modern platform.

IBM will be working with Guidewire to implement ClaimCenter. EQC has opted to host the application off-site on IBM’s servers. IBM global business services partner Bill Doak said, “IBM elected to bring Guidewire ClaimCenter into the project due to the system’s widespread use by private insurers worldwide and the company’s impressive track record of customer successes. ClaimCenter is a readily configurable application that is capabable of meeting EQC’s specific needs.”

Guidewire ClaimCenter is a leading end-to-end claims system for general insurance. ClaimCenter’s flexible business rules enable claims organizations to optimize and monitor the claim process. Claims executives can define, enforce, and continually refine their preferred claim handling practices. In addition, ClaimCenter uses a modern technology architecture, including a 100% Web client and Web services interface that enable lower total cost of ownership in any environment.

“We are pleased to be involved in this project and appreciate the confidence in our ClaimCenter solution. We look forward to working in collaboration with IBM and the EQC team for a successful implementation,” noted John Raguin, chief executive officer, Guidewire Software.