Meet EMC Insurance

Business Benefits

• Make quicker product and process changes to improve speed-to-market
• Tight alignment between our digital product and business teams to better understand the needs
• Integrate with third parties and other platforms to improve core and auxiliary systems

The Story

EMC Insurance was founded in 1911 as an association of business people providing workers’ compensation coverage to Iowa manufacturers. Today, EMC ranks among the top 60 P&C insurance organizations in the United States, selling its property and casualty insurance solely through independent agencies in more than 40 states. 

Since embarking on its digital transformation journey in 2020, EMC’s technology teams are making it easier and faster to do business. Over 300 business applications, many of which were built in-house, needed to be simplified along with the core application software. Guidewire’s industry-leading cloud-based platform was a big reason it decided to implement InsuranceSuite.

Joe Riesberg, Chief Information Officer, said, “By adopting Guidewire Cloud as our digital platform, we can advance the way we do business and elevate the customer experience.” He added, “We will be able to make quicker product and process changes, which will improve our speed-to-market. This will enrich agent and customer experiences by providing more ways to meet their needs, enhance our relationships, and create industry-leading processes for the entire insurance lifecycle.”

Even More Benefits

The benefits of moving to Guidewire Cloud go beyond the initial expectations. Guidewire’s Marketplace is critical to EMC’s success.

“In addition,” Riesberg noted, “by migrating to the cloud, we can leverage third-party integrations and connect with other platforms that enhance our core system. The partner ecosystem and the ability to integrate seamlessly is a key win for us and a big part of our business strategy and digital transformation.”

Meeting Aggressive Goals

As part of its overall business strategy, EMC has some aggressive targets in its multi-year strategic planning that it wants to accomplish by 2025. Riesberg said, “Having the Guidewire system up and available will be critical to reaching those goals.” He added, “The product’s data, the analytics, the ability to look, slice, and dice the data, is greater than we’ve ever had before.”

Technology and Business Working Together

The biggest change that EMC has seen since moving to Guidewire is how the Technology teams and business teams work together. Riesberg said, “The move to Guidewire has required re-skilling, up-skilling, and changing how we behave as a business.” He added, “Alongside any successful digital transformation, you must also change the way you work.  A key part of our success story has been the creation of the Digital Product Management (DPM) team. DPM has changed how we build new solutions that enable our team members to better serve our customers. Working together with our business partners has helped us to better understand what they want to see from an agent perspective, a claims perspective, and a customer service perspective.”