Grinnell Mutual Deploys Guidewire InsurancePlatform via Guidewire Cloud to Accelerate Growth

Grinnell Mutual, a century-old property and casualty insurer and reinsurer, and Guidewire Software, Inc. (NYSE: GWRE), provider of the industry platform Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers rely upon, today announced that Grinnell Mutual has successfully deployed Guidewire InsurancePlatform™ as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution via Guidewire Cloud™. By leveraging InsurancePlatform in Guidewire Cloud, Grinnell Mutual is now free to accelerate its business objectives to adapt to changing market demands and enhance customer service.

Grinnell Mutual’s implementation project, internally called CONNECT, is a business-led technology initiative to remake all of Grinnell Mutual’s business interfaces by replacing its previous systems with InsurancePlatform to support quoting, rating, underwriting, policy generation, claims processing, and billing, offering end-to-end policy management and issuance functions. The project was focused on providing a quality product, rather than speed to market, to fulfill its commitment to giving customers the best and staying on the forefront of innovation.

With this in mind, the company adapted the CONNECT project schedule as needed to accommodate a mid-project migration to Guidewire Cloud, which varied from its initial selection of self-managed InsurancePlatform. CONNECT culminated in the launch of Grinnell Compass, a new underwriting company for a new multivariate auto insurance product in Pennsylvania, as well as the introduction of Grinnell’s Home-Guard® product. CONNECT is currently deploying InsurancePlatform via Guidewire Cloud to the rest of its personal lines of business in Pennsylvania, followed by all of the other states where it operates, and will conclude with its commercial lines of business in those states.

“The insurance industry is being disrupted and customer expectations are evolving,” said Ken Klug, co-executive sponsor of CONNECT and vice president, Direct Claims, Grinnell Mutual. “Grinnell Mutual is embracing this and forging ahead with best-in-class technology widely considered the gold standard in the P&C insurance industry. Guidewire is a great fit for our customer-centric business model, offering ease of use and enabling us to do business with them and our agents the way they want to. It’s a very exciting time!”

Roby Shay, chief information officer and vice president, Enterprise Solutions, Grinnell Mutual, said, “The CONNECT project’s work, and the implementation of Guidewire InsurancePlatform via Guidewire Cloud, is something we have to do to position ourselves for the future.”

“What I found so interesting and heartening about my interactions with the agents was that the technology was so intuitive that our conversations focused on agents’ needs around products and services, and not around how to work with the technology,” said Mike Shepardson, assistant vice president, Sales, Service, and Specialty, Grinnell Mutual. “It’s amazing to me that this thing we’ve been working so long and so hard on to make user-friendly just faded into the background because it was exactly that. When something that’s so complicated on the back end looks easy to users, that’s a huge success.”

Guidewire Cloud is powered by AWS’s highly resilient cloud infrastructure, with SLAs backed by experienced Guidewire teams and SaaS-certified partners spanning application management, system administration, security and compliance, upgrades, QA testing, health checks, and other services. With Guidewire Cloud, insurers can focus on business agility and better engagement while transferring undifferentiating IT responsibilities to Guidewire.

“We congratulate Grinnell on its successful Guidewire Cloud implementation project and the launch of Grinnell Compass in Pennsylvania,” said Mike Polelle, chief delivery officer, Guidewire Software. “We appreciate the confidence the company has placed in our cloud services capabilities and admire its mission of cultivating trust by delivering innovative solutions to all of its stakeholders – mutual members, agents, policyholders, and employees.”