The goal was to become more competitive in the market.
Friends Cove needed to grow their business and improve their competitive position as they adapted to the changing insurance market.
An old quoting system offered limited capability.
Like many insurers, they were constrained by a legacy system that lacked the features and capabilities to support their business objectives. Working around its limitations took a lot of time and resources, and they struggled to respond to new market opportunities.
Friends Cove was using a homegrown quoting system for their quoting process. When first implemented in 2009, their system had been a significant advancement for the company, and over the next ten years, they had achieved major benefits from its use. By 2019, however, it had reached its end-of-life and was no longer supported.
Technical limitations in this custom quoting system also made integration difficult. Friends Cove had implemented BriteCore as its new cloud-based core platform for policy, billing, claims, and portals. The old quoting solution could not interface with the new system, which had resulted in unacceptable limitations in automation and a high level of manual workarounds in the quoting process.
Friends Cove needed to replace its custom quoting system with a modern, web-based solution to increase automation and ease of use for employees and agents. They also needed to be able to modify underwriting questions on the fly.
Collaborating on the technical transition and user adoption plan.
Solving these software issues would put Friends Cove in a better position to take advantage of new technology and enable them to focus on the business of insurance. First, they needed to configure their existing lines of business to support more streamlined quoting. Friends Cove implemented BriteCore’s all-in-one policy administration system, which includes quoting and underwriting..
Friends Cove knew this initiative was critical to their business, and as a small company, they could not dedicate resources to the project full time. BriteCore helped them complete the lines initiative to configure their lines of business at speed without pulling their own staff from business-critical roles. BriteCore dedicated resources from their professional services team to work alongside Friends Cove staff. The companies managed the project collaboratively, including planning, executing, testing, and revising the BriteCore launch based on internal feedback and key results. They also worked together on user research and marketing campaigns to increase the adoption of the new quoting system.
Measuring Success
In March 2019, Friends Cove Mutual rolled BriteCore out to their agency force. Both agents and Friends Cove’s own staff reported that the intuitive nature of the BriteCore platform made it easy to learn and quickly experience its benefits. Friends Cove saw three key results:
New Business Growth
Friends Cove processed its first quote and application on the new system in March of 2019. Within seven months, the company saw a 61.5% growth in new business compared to the previous year and was able to reduce staff by 15%. Friends Cove also saw a significant increase in operational efficiency, ease of use, and workforce adoption after partnering with BriteCore to launch.
Efficiency Gains
Efficiency gains in the quoting and application conversion phases significantly reduced workloads for Friends Cove’s staff. Eliminating redundant data entry when converting a quote to a policy gave Friends Cove the opportunity to keep staffing at historically low levels while still maintaining a high level of customer service to their agents and policyholders.
Adoption and Outreach
Friends Cove enjoyed high workplace adoption of the new system from the start, due in part to successful outreach and marketing. The BriteCore team provided expertise to design and execute the marketing strategy for rollout. The tailored campaign was well received by agents, and allowed Friends Cove to gain experience in more sophisticated marketing techniques for future use.
