Meet Ascot Group

Business Benefits

• Cut a claim payment from 26 manual steps to 5 clicks, giving adjusters time back for complex decisions
• Reduced claim setup from 48 hours to 20 minutes with “Waldo,” an AI agent that creates claims in ClaimCenter, while cutting BPO costs by 50%
• Moved from waiting up to six months for an enhancement to releasing enhancements every month
• Reduced underwriting risk assessment from about two hours to about two minutes with an AI assistant developed with Guidewire

The Story

Ascot Group is a global specialty insurer headquartered in New York. Born in the wake of September 11, when the company accelerated its launch to bring capacity to a paralyzed market, Ascot has kept seizing opportunities. And, its U.S. operation is now the group’s growth engine.

Specialty claims are a different game. “We do not have call centers, and we do not have standard personal lines coverages,” said Marina Barg, Ascot’s U.S. Chief Claims Officer. “What we have is complexity and volatility. The more we can focus our adjusters on solving those problems, the better our results will be.”

Seizing the Moment to Modernize Claims

When Barg joined Ascot in 2021, she quickly identified a challenge that needed to be solved fast. The claims team was working in a policy system that had been customized over the years to handle claims, which kept the work manual and made it hard to scale.

“Our claims professionals were bogged down by technology that wasn’t fit for purpose,” said Barg. “It couldn’t support the volume of claims we were processing, it failed at the most inopportune times, and it routinely failed to save the information our adjusters spent time entering.”

Ascot’s leadership backed the move. “Our senior management team understood the importance of claims, which is our promise to clients to be there when they need us most,” Barg said.

Ascot selected Guidewire ClaimCenter on Guidewire Cloud, with an eye on staying aligned with Guidewire’s roadmap. “We didn’t want to duplicate anything coming through the Guidewire roadmap,” she explained. “That’s why we picked the Guidewire, and that’s why we picked Guidewire Cloud: to get the updates we need and keep progressing.”

A Launch Driven by the Business

In January 2025, Ascot went live with ClaimCenter for all new claims across its casualty, environmental, D&O, E&O, financial lines, and marine businesses, and began migrating open claims from its legacy system. The project was delivered on time and on budget, with Cognizant leading the implementation and Guidewire consulting supporting architectural review.

Ascot chose to start with the core product and avoid over-engineering, even as it supported highly specialized coverages. “We went with the MVP product up front,” said Barg. “We didn’t want to over-engineer, and we wanted to be able to take the right enhancements and upgrades as they come through.”

Business engagement made the difference. “One of the keys to success was the level of engagement from the claims team and Marina herself as sponsor, day in and day out,” said Owen Williams, Ascot’s Chief Information Officer.

Barg agrees. “It’s not an IT project, and it’s not a business project. It’s a combination of the two, driven by the business side with huge support from our IT partners,” she said. “Get the people who are actually using it involved early.”

Results Adjusters Feel Every Day

Adjusters now work with visibility into claims from multiple perspectives, a diary system that keeps claims from slipping through the cracks, supervisory review, and a workflow built for Ascot’s specialty lines. The payment process alone dropped from 26 manual steps to five clicks.

“The adjusters are really happy,” said Barg. “It’s head and shoulders above what we were using before: visibility into claims handling, a proper diary system so we don’t lose track of claims, supervisory review, and a workflow that works for all of our exotic lines of business.”

Cloud updates have been just as smooth. “The fact that I know nothing about the update is probably a good thing,” Barg said.

The pace of improvement has also changed. “We used to wait six months sometimes for an enhancement in our old system,” said Jake Acosta, Ascot’s Head of Claims Operations and Strategy. “Now, every month we’re doing enhancements and evaluating new things, and if we want to turn something off, it’s easy.”

From Core to AI: Building on the ClaimCenter Foundation

With ClaimCenter in place, Ascot turned to first notice of loss (FNOL). Every FNOL had flowed through an outsourced BPO, taking 48 hours to set up a claim at an average cost of about $250,000 a year that grew with claim volume. “The base request was, now that we have ClaimCenter, how can we improve our operations for claims?” Acosta said.

Partnering with Bevaya, a Guidewire PartnerConnect partner, Ascot created “Waldo,” an AI agent named by its own claims team that reads incoming FNOL emails, extracts the data, and creates claims in ClaimCenter through Guidewire’s APIs. Jonathan Berg, Sr. Business Analyst, served as dedicated product owner from start to finish. Claim setup now takes about 20 minutes. In its first five months, Waldo processed 90% of new claims created in ClaimCenter, 77% of FNOLs needed little to no human intervention, and BPO costs fell by 50%.

ClaimCenter was central to making it work. “ClaimCenter was the main reason we took this on. It made it so easy to build on,” said Acosta. “I don’t think we could have done this as effectively without Guidewire ClaimCenter.” And the approach is built to scale. “Using this FNOL AI agent, we can triple, quadruple in size, and get more claims, and it wouldn’t impact the agent,” Acosta said. “It’s a huge efficiency and cost gain for us.”

The speed has changed the relationship with brokers, including Marsh and Aon. “Brokers used to send us something and not hear back for two days,” said Acosta. “Now, if they don’t hear back from us in one day, they’re reaching out to ask if we received it.” It has also opened the door to more automation. “The ability to adopt an external AI company to create FNOLs has been a launching pad for other initiatives in Ascot Claims,” said Berg.

Innovating Together on Underwriting

Ascot’s AI work with Guidewire began on the underwriting side. Underwriters face 50 to 100 new submissions a day, and Williams began experimenting with GenAI on his own to see whether a submission could become a consistent underwriting analysis. Working with Guidewire on a five-month proof of concept, Ascot piloted a digital underwriting assistant for cyber insurance, an effort honored with a 2024 Guidewire Innovation Award.

“This is a very different way of working, and it required a leap of faith on both parties’ parts,” said Williams. The results were clear. “We see a significant reduction in the time it takes for an underwriter to assess a risk. It moves from about two hours to about two minutes,” he said. “An underwriter now has the ability to underwrite more risks. We are extremely bullish on where this is going.”

Looking Ahead with Confidence

Ascot is extending the flywheel. The team is implementing automated claim assignment so adjusters receive claims immediately based on account, line of business, and expertise, and has signed on with Bevaya for a second phase that applies AI to indexing inbound claims email.

“Guidewire has been transformational to our claims operations,” said Barg, “but our journey is not yet done.”