Eastern Mutual Insurance
NY P&C Insurer Automates Operations and Improves Agent Experience with BriteCore
Deploying a Modern Platform to Support Operations, Reporting, and Plans for Growth
After more than ten years of sharing a core system with another insurer, Eastern Mutual Insurance Company (Eastern Mutual) unexpectedly found itself facing an urgent need for a new system. The company selected BriteCore and became an early customer. With focused effort and much support from BriteCore, Eastern Mutual completed the implementation of the system within their required timeframe.
After deploying the BriteCore Platform, Eastern Mutual focused on enhancing its reporting. Working collaboratively with BriteCore, Eastern successfully refined its reporting capabilities to meet reinsurance reporting requirements. Over time processes have evolved to provide reports used to analyze company and agency results.
BriteCore enabled Eastern Mutual to easily adopt third-party integrations, such as Mass Printing for off-site printing and InsVista for automated mortgagee notifications. These have allowed Eastern Mutual to improve processes and reduce internal print and mail volume.
In addition, Eastern Mutual’s new cloud-based platform helped facilitate remote work capabilities to comply with New York State Department of Financial Services disaster planning. When the pandemic began in 2020, the company transitioned to remote work and continues to use a hybrid model today.
Encouraged by its success with the BriteCore platform, Eastern Mutual is confident about the future. BriteCore is enabling the company to move beyond an initial focus on operational efficiencies toward more aggressive plans for growth. During this next phase, Eastern Mutual plans to enhance its lines of business and attract even more agents by improving the process of quoting new business.
Eastern Mutual Insurance Company: “Serving our neighbors since 1855”
Eastern Mutual Insurance Company has served Upstate New York for over 160 years. The company prides itself on top-quality insurance programs delivered through the personal touch of local, independent agents. The company’s underwriters design innovative coverage solutions and their professional insurance agents are ready to listen and help policyholders. Eastern Mutual lives by its motto, “Do what is right.”
An Unexpected Change Drives an Urgent Need for a New System
After decades of sharing a core system with another mutual insurer, Eastern Mutual Insurance Company (Eastern Mutual) unexpectedly found itself in the market for a new core insurance platform when this insurance partner decided to move to a new system. Given the system selected by the partner was too complex, costly, and overkill for their needs, Eastern Mutual faced a 12-month deadline to identify a new policy administration system.
BriteCore’s Cloud-based Platform Emerges as the Winning Solution
Eastern Mutual quickly selected BriteCore, a new core insurance platform built through a close partnership with P&C insurers, and became one of BriteCore’s early customers. The process of implementing BriteCore was a success, even with the added stress of an accelerated timeline. Eastern Mutual completed the search, selection, and implementation of BriteCore within their 12-month deadline.
“Eastern selected BriteCore because it provided a configurable and fully functional policy management system for our URB-based insurance policies in New York”, said Kent Johnson, President of Eastern Mutual Insurance Company. We were able to easily implement the new cloud-based core system in a limited timeframe. Now, the BriteCore Platform provides much greater up-time and security than we could ever have achieved with an in-house system. We have successfully run our business using BriteCore for many years and I am confident we will have continued success with BriteCore in the future.”
New Reporting Capabilities for URB, Process Automation, and Cloud-based Operations
After selecting and deploying the BriteCore Platform, Eastern Mutual focused on developing reports on the new core insurance system. By working collaboratively with BriteCore, Eastern successfully established reporting processes to meet business needs, including NAIC reporting, reinsurance data submissions, and analysis of results.
With BriteCore, Eastern Mutual has well-defined processes for creating monthly reports used by company management to analyze agencies and agency group results. Eastern analyzes overall in-force policy changes and loss results and provides data to agency groups, and agencies to keep them updated on their year-to-date progress. The reports capture net changes in policy count and provide a detailed breakdown of in-force premiums. This valuable data and insight inform their agencies on exactly where they stand each month and is used for year-end projections. By regularly providing agents and agencies with access to this valuable information from the BriteCore system, Eastern Mutual has strengthened partnerships with agencies.
Along with reporting capabilities, BriteCore enabled Eastern Mutual to easily create new third-party integrations, such as Mass Printing for off-site printing and InsVista for automated mortgagee notifications. Adding these and other new vendor integrations further streamlined and accelerated daily processes, allowing Eastern Mutual to improve efficiency and reduce paper handling in the office.
In addition, Eastern Mutual was pleased that their new cloud-based platform helps with remote capabilities needed to comply with disaster planning requirements issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Eastern staff work remotely, cost-effectively, with the same performance as in the office. Eastern Mutual has effectively addressed the requirements of its business continuity needs.
When the worldwide pandemic began in early 2020, many insurance carriers’ operations were disrupted by lockdowns and radical changes in their business operations that had to be made quickly and without warning. Thanks to BriteCore’s cloud-native core insurance platform and Eastern Mutual’s business continuity planning, Eastern smoothly transitioned to a remote work model during the pandemic. This transition was so successful that the company continues to effectively operate with a hybrid, part-office and part-remote model today.
Encouraged by their success with the BriteCore platform, and overcoming the acid test of a disruptive pandemic, Eastern Mutual is confident about what the future holds for its insurance business. BriteCore is enabling the company to move beyond a focus on operational efficiencies toward more aggressive plans for growth. During this next phase, Eastern Mutual plans to enhance its various lines of business and improve the agent experience to attract more agents by making the new business quoting process even faster and easier.
