Cloud migration can be a daunting endeavor for any P&C insurer—especially those serving a business community still in recovery mode a year after the devastating wildfire on Maui. Martin J. Welch, CEO of Hawaii Employers' Mutual Insurance Company (HEMIC), shares the secret to successfully transitioning to the cloud: "Wear a helmet."
Founded in 1996 and ranked as Hawaii's top workers' compensation insurer, Honolulu-based HEMIC serves more than 6,700 businesses and 75,000 workers across the islands. A seasoned industry executive with decades of leadership experience, Welch has served as HEMIC's CEO for the past dozen years after stints at Wausau Insurance, Employers, and others. Since 2020, he has led the organization through COVID lockdowns, a strategic cloud migration, and the aftermath of the cataclysmic events in Lahaina. More recently, he has helped the organization navigate new regulatory mandates and launch new initiatives targeting the SMB market.
"We realized early on that being a one-line, one-state writer of workers' compensation insurance sitting out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean presented significant risk to [our obligation to be] financially strong enough to keep our promises to our policyholders forever," says Welch. To that end, the organization's diversification into complementary lines in support of businesses has included temporary disability and third-party administrative (TPA) services for self-insured entities and captive insurers.
When you talk with Welch, you quickly realize HEMIC is about much more than just business. It's about an Aloha spirit that permeates everything the organization does. As its advertising puts it, Hawaii's Aloha culture is "one of a kind—with an emphasis on 'kind.'" "Living on an island brings with it responsibilities," he says. "We refer to it as our Kuleana. What living on an island really means is what happens to you happens to me…that means that we will survive a disaster together, we will care for one another together, we will recover together, and we will rebuild together." It's not just lip service. This past May, Forbes ran an article about the concept behind Kuleana, specifically citing HEMIC as its exemplar.
In Welch's eyes, cloud migration was key to scaling this approach to its operations. "The success of our cloud migration will be measured through our agility and capacity to deliver expansive capabilities across the HEMIC family of companies, realizing data-driven, straight-through processing gains across multiple departments to ultimately service our agents and policyholders faster, more effectively, and with less expense."
As for his advice to "wear a helmet" during cloud migration? "Seriously, these projects are huge lifts, and you need to be confident going in that you're well-prepared and up to the task," he says. "You need to completely understand what you are moving from and where you are moving to." Another key attribute: "Maybe most importantly, you need to have a tolerance to fail as part of that process—with room to address failure along the way and leverage your partnerships to resolve those issues." It's putting Kuleana in action to get to the cloud. Listen now.