Hamblen Mutual Insurance Company
Mutual insurer dramatically improves business performance and efficiency through BriteCore
Deploying a New System Drives Hamblen Mutual’s Business Improvement Effort
Hamblen Mutual Insurance Company had served Eastern Tennessee for over a century, but its legacy system was preventing it from adapting to change. The system was difficult to use, relied on paper-intensive manual workarounds, and left the company vulnerable to business disruptions.
When the company embarked on a business improvement effort that included an influx of new employees, Hamblen’s leadership recognized it was time to modernize. The company selected and completed the implementation of the BriteCore Platform (including data conversion) in less than four months.
Upon implementing BriteCore, Hamblen Mutual benefited from the modern system’s intuitive design, which enabled new employees to quickly become proficient with BriteCore. The company saw improvements in daily operations through better access to key policy information, new capabilities for remote and field operations, and readily accessible management reports. BriteCore’s agent portal provided greater flexibility and reduced administrative burdens for both agents and Hamblen employees.
The adoption of BriteCore has been the most critical element in Hamblen’s business improvement effort and has positioned the company for new opportunities and growth.
Hamblen Mutual: More than a Century of Service to Eastern Tennessee
Hamblen Mutual has provided insurance services in Eastern Tennessee for more than 100 years. The company was founded in 1909 by a group of farmers who were frustrated with the lack of insurance options available at the time. Over the last century, Hamblen has grown to offer a range of insurance products for farm owners, their livestock, and equipment; homeowners; mobile home owners; and churches.
Moving Past System Limitations to Achieve New Levels of Service
Hamblen’s legacy system was blocking the company from growing and adapting to change. The system dated to the late 1970s and was inefficient and difficult to use. Employees had to navigate dated and obscure user interfaces and a complex web of hardcopy documents and manual workarounds to complete daily processes. It was common for employees to spend 30 minutes or more performing multiple searches in different areas of the system to assemble a complete picture of a single policy. This system was especially challenging for new employees, who required weeks to learn the system and associated workarounds.
With the legacy system, the company’s operations were vulnerable to disruption. Servers for their system were maintained on-premise at the company’s office, so any loss of physical access to the office severely hampered operations. The company’s business operations were also at risk from potential hardware failures and any associated delays in restoration/recovery.
Setting the Stage for Business Improvement with BriteCore
Hamblen’s leadership embarked on a broad business improvement program that included a sustained recruiting effort for new employees. With this transformation of the people and processes, the company’s leadership also recognized it was time to move to a modern policy administration system. Hamblen selected the cloud-based BriteCore Platform and completed the implementation (including data conversion) in less than four months.
Enhanced Capabilities Accelerate Operations and Open New Opportunities for Growth
Upon implementing BriteCore, Hamblen Mutual gained access to key information, accelerated business operations, and enhanced the agent experience with an intuitive agent portal for quoting and self-service.
Improved access to information
BriteCore’s intuitive workflows provided employees with critical information as they needed it to complete each stage of core processing. This eliminated time previously lost searching for information and yielded a 30% increase in daily productivity. BriteCore’s library of standard reports gave management ready access to key information and insights.
Accelerated business operations
BriteCore’s automation and digital processing accelerated operations and eliminated most hardcopy documents. Anywhere/anytime access to the cloud-based BriteCore Platform improved field activities by enabling policy updates to be completed in real-time, onsite. The time required for property inspections, for example, was reduced by half.
Enhanced agent experience
Online access to the system through BriteCore’s agent portal gave more flexibility and control. Agents were able to process applications, inquiries, and transactions (such as payments and payment schedules) through the BriteCore portal’s online self-service capabilities, which substantially reduced the processing burden for Hamblen’s office team.
Prior to BriteCore, Hamblen had a marginally effective policy admin system – an antiquated database that was difficult for employees to learn and use. With the shift to the modern BriteCore Platform, Hamblen’s agents and employees were equipped with a modern, cloud-based core system with true end-to-end support for their insurance operations. Agents were able to operate flexibly with less dependence through BriteCore’s agent portal. BriteCore’s intuitive design and streamlined workflows enabled Hamblen to add new employees, quickly get them up to speed with minimal training, and achieve levels of productivity impossible with the former system. As Hamblen looks to the future, BriteCore’s advanced and intuitive capabilities and support for new products have opened the door to new opportunities for growth.
