FirstBest Congratulates XL Group CIO Robin Arendt Insurance & Technology Elite 8 Honoree

BEDFORD, Mass., Nov. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstBest® Systems, Inc., provider of insurance software solutions for global insurance carriers, today congratulated customer Robin Arendt, global CIO of XL Group plc (XL) for being named a 2013 Elite 8 honoree by Insurance & Technology.  Driven by a transformational business strategy, Arendt has spearheaded programs to accelerate speed-to-market, improve data quality and deliver analytics integration to drive profitable growth across four XL Group business units worldwide.

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Teaming with XL business units Ms. Arendt delivered a 3-5 year IT roadmap to articulate and prioritize her vision to deliver business value. It included 8 parallel initiatives, based largely on best-of-breed solutions. Arendt ensured the initiatives included careful planning, integration and risk mitigation via incremental rollouts, and steep goals for team engagement and performance. To date, Ms. Arendt and her team have achieved strong execution results: over 90% on time, on budget across the portfolio. 

One of the most visionary accomplishments within Ms. Arendt's IT transformation portfolio is XL's new Global Underwriting Platform (GUP), powered by FirstBest's underwriting workstation and portal.  Focusing on efficiency and growing the existing book of business, the first phase of the program will bring underwriters across the company onto the same target operating model, deployed through an enterprise underwriting platform to increase efficiencies without disrupting the book of business.  Aimed at transforming the business, the second phase will bring together a variety of data, enabling XL to target new markets for growth with pinpoint pricing.  The new underwriting platform will enable XL's business units to respond rapidly to new market opportunities, driving up to a 40% underwriting productivity lift and a $233 million net 5 year benefit.

"Under Robin Arendt's exceptional leadership the XL team has delivered transformative programs with outstanding results," said FirstBest Founder and CEO John Belizaire.  "Achieving success with the initial goal of growing the business while lowering expenses, GUP provides XL users access to much more information, enabling underwriters to more accurately target opportunities with pinpoint pricing to create business growth in new ways."

"Robin Arendt's commitment to providing modern, flexible systems that enable XL Group's business strategy and growth, along with her passion for people development, have been essential to her leadership of a wide-ranging and successful business transformation," said Kathleen Burger, Editorial Director, Insurance & Technology.  Ms. Arendt and her accomplishments have been profiled in Insurance & Technology.

Celebrating its fifteenth year, the Elite 8 award is determined by the editors of Insurance & Technology.  The distinguished list of insurance leaders that make up the 2013 Elite 8 were selected for their ability to combine smarts, experience, vision, creativity and common sense in order to help their teams overcome budget limitations, regulatory restrictions, technological uncertainty and cultural resistance to drive productivity, profitability and growth. Joining Robin Arendt, XL Group Global CIO among the 2013 Elite 8 honorees are; Judy Haddad, Chief Information Officer, Patriot National Insurance Group, Suren Gupta, EVP, Technology & Operations, Allstate, Mark Caron, Senior Vice President and CIO, Capital Blue Cross, Piyush Singh, SVP and Chief Information Officer, Great American Insurance Co., Peter Moreau, VP and Chief Information Officer, Amica Mutual Insurance, Manish Bhatt, Chief Digital Officer, MetLife, and Michael Healy, Executive Director and Chief Information Officer, AXA Equitable.

About Global Underwriting Platform (GUP) 
A company-wide, multi-year initiative gives users a single underwriting desktop, with seamless access to third-party systems for pricing, risk management, legacy integration, and reporting.

About FirstBest 
FirstBest® Systems is the leading provider of insurance software solutions that help global insurance companies improve underwriting profitability, scale their business and achieve high service levels with agents, across the enterprise. The patented and proven FirstBest Front Office Suite has processed more than $12 billion in quotes and includes modular underwriting workstation, mobile underwriting, agent portal, and agency upload applications. Leading American and international carriers such as XL Group plc, OneBeacon Insurance Group, Chesapeake Employers, Beacon Mutual, ICW Group Insurance Companies, Amerisafe, and others rely on FirstBest to improve underwriting efficiencies and quality, institutionalize knowledge and best practices, and empower everyone in the process to rapidly quote, collaborate, issue, and bind business on a single real-time platform from anywhere.  To learn more, call +1-781-863-6000.

SOURCE FirstBest Systems, Inc.