Guidewire Software is Ranked No. 1 in Five 2013 VIP Categories

By Daniel Brecht
Contributing Writer

Headquartered in Foster City, Calif., Guidewire Software, Inc. is a publicly traded company founded in 2001 that provides software and solutions for property and casualty (P&C) insurers worldwide.

For years, the company has remained in a dominant position in the claims management modules market as a top-notch technology solution provider to the insurance industry. In fact, it recently won first place in five of six categories at the seventh annual Vanguards in Insurance Practices (VIP) awards during a ceremony at the ACORD LOMA Forum in Las Vegas on May 6. This is an event sponsored by Insurance Networking News (INN,) in partnership with Celent, that had insurance company professionals identify the leaders in insurance technology through their participation in an online survey. Again, Guidewire Software came out on top.

This marks the seventh consecutive year the company received the VIP Best Practices award where it has outranked its competition, again, in delivering the most value in various VIP categories based on votes from 476 unique respondents. At the 2013 VIP awards event, its Back Office & Support Systems, Customer Experience Solutions, Decision Support Solutions, Insurance Core Solutions, and Strategic Partner were all top winners. The only category in which Guidewire did not place on top was Emerging Technologies.

According to Carrie Burns, editor-in-chief of INN, Guidewire’s suite offerings for Property/Casualty insurers are flexible and scalable solutions that span the core functional areas in insurance and “enable insurers to deliver excellent service [to support their customers], increase market share and lower operating costs.”

As Chuck Johnston, director of Celent, affirmed, “Guidewire is very effective in building and supporting their partner networks…They’ve also built out a solid organization that has connected with their customers and created good rapport.”

Brian Desmond, vice president of marketing at Guidewire, explained that the company is honored to have received the VIP awards. He added that the team is determined to support insurers' strategic business objectives and their mission-critical operations by providing accommodating core systems that spans the entire property/casualty (P/C) insurance lifecycle, which “enables them to deliver insurance the way they want to.”

As a result of the seventh annual VIP ranking, Guidewire Software continues to be one of the best claims vendors across the globe. At present, Guidewire has a number of consulting partners that serve specific regions in 10 countries. It is also supporting 20 live customers in Central and South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Going global has made it possible to expand the customer base while boosting service levels and maintaining retention and satisfaction.

From the marketing perspective, Guidewire plans on investing more in PC core systems engineering—to improve products so customers can replace legacy systems. The company is currently experiencing strong growth, according to Q3 fiscal financial results thanks to its investments in expanding product capabilities and global reach.

According to Desmond, Guidewire will continue its visible leadership role in the claims management modules market as it is absolutely committed to customer success. He says several of the company’s products are, in fact, beneficial for users, such as the InsuranceSuite consisting of ClaimCenter, which supports end-to-end claims, as well as PolicyCenter, which underwrites risk and manage policies, and BillingCenter, which supports end-to-end billing and receivables management process. Even the cloud-based network solution, Guidewire Live, which is used to connect peer insurers and carry out context-driven decisions and actions via hosted apps—and is also able to be used inside InsuranceSuite—makes it possible to deliver a complete solution with minimal IT effort.

In sum, Guidewire provides powerful software, delivery expertise and commitment to customers in supporting their unique needs thanks to its products and a platform that uses state-of-the-art technology. To find out more on what this insurance technology industry provider offers, visit their website. There, one can also discover details of the company’s recent assigned patent for “managing risks associated with reinsurance.”