Encova Insurance

Business Benefits

• Created a new business operating model, commercial lines products, and organizational structure

• Improved operational efficiency, flexibility, upgradeability, and productivity throughout the organization 

• Developed its first new personal lines product in only 18 months

• Expanded products to price and underwrite business by introducing integrations with Guidewire’s partner ecosystem

The Story

Encova Insurance (formerly Motorists Insurance Group) strives to be the most trusted and responsive carrier in the independent agency system. To achieve its goals, the company ― a network of P&C, life insurance, and insurance brokerage companies and agents ― decided to modernize both its technology infrastructure and operations to better address the evolving needs of its agents and policyholders.

The modernization project began in 2017, when the insurer leveraged an innovative greenfield startup approach to deliver business and IT benefits with its transformational program, using Guidewire InsuranceSuite and digital capabilities. With Guidewire and other vended technologies, it was able to create a brand-new commercial lines company.

Following that, Encova began looking at its personal lines book of business.

“We actually considered exiting the market in personal lines because our products and services had become so antiquated and we were no longer competitive,” noted John Kessler, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. “During that time in which we had put all our focus on commercial lines, we fell even further behind in personal lines.”

Encova decided to take the risk and move forward with transforming its personal lines. Development began in 2019. It took only 18 months to launch Encova’s first product on the new personal lines platform.

“We knew we had the infrastructure in place from an operational, organizational, financial, technology, and administrative perspective,” said Kessler.

As part of the transformation, Encova introduced a number of integrations because it expanded the number of products to price and underwrite.

Encova leadership credits Guidewire’s ecosystem for the success.

“This was a very collaborative effort across the entire spectrum of the organization,” said Matt Wilcox, Executive Vice President of Personal Lines. “With the increased number of integrations, we certainly had to take advantage of the Guidewire accelerators. Integrations in the previous world would have been impossible for us because we had six different legacy systems as opposed to one platform.”

Since launching, Encova’s new business sales have increased. The straight-through-processing rate climbed.

By implementing digital capabilities and rebranding the agent portal as Encova Edge, the insurer was able to roll out a variety of features and functionality to agents that were not possible before. With CustomerEngage, Encova was able to deliver a state-of-the-art digital service for policyholders for all lines to enable access to policy information, billing history, claims, FNOL, and documents.

Among the many benefits afforded Encova, InsuranceSuite has enabled the company to standardize underwriting, policy administration, billing, and claims management on a cohesive technology platform. Further, Encova can develop and execute best practices to deliver high levels of service to its independent agents and customers by empowering them with digital self-service claims, policy servicing, and quoting capabilities.

About Encova Insurance

Headquarters: Columbus, Ohio
Operations: US
Business Lines: Commercial, Personal