FirstBest Customer XL Group Nominated for Novarica Research Council Award Based on Transformation Achieved with Global Underwriting Platform

BEDFORD, Mass., June 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstBest® Systems, Inc., provider of insurance software solutions for American and international property and casualty insurance carriers, today announced that FirstBest customer XL Group has been nominated for a Novarica Research Council Impact Award in the category of Transformation for their Global Underwriting Platform.

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The Novarica Research Council Impact Awards are awarded annually based on a review of case studies submitted by insurers. Nominees are chosen by a panel of insurer CIO members of the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council, which includes more than 300 insurer CIOs and senior IT executives. Members of the 2013 nominating committee included executives from Ameritas, Amica, Glatfelter, Liberty Mutual, National Life Group, New York Life Investments Mgt, Pioneer State Mutual, Sammons Group, The Hartford, and Wilton Re. Winners will be determined by a vote open to all Council members and announced at a panel and networking event in New York City in August. More details are online at http://www.novarica.com/impact2013.

"The Novarica Research Council Impact Awards are the only pure peer-reviewed award for insurance IT leaders," said Matthew Josefowicz, a managing director of Novarica, which runs the Council and administers the awards. "Only CIOs and senior IT executives have a vote – no vendors or consultants are involved in the selection."

"We are so pleased to be selected as a nominee for this prestigious award.  Our joint XL and FirstBest team has worked hard to create an innovative Global Underwriting Platform that will yield up to 40% productivity improvements ─ and this recognition is invigorating.  Being chosen by a committee of our industry peers makes the nomination even more rewarding," said Robin Arendt, XL Group's Chief Information Officer.

XL Group's Global Underwriting Platform will serve as the centerpiece – along with a client and broker relationship management system, risk pricing platform and other technologies ─ in a set of systems designed to improve the Company's overall policy lifecycle management.   Much like other insurers, the global multi-line carrier needed to address paper-based underwriting processes that relied on unstructured workflows, did not capture much of the risk data leading to a policy, and limited future analytics of risk characteristics to loss ratio(s).

The transformational initiative nominated by the Council delivers an integrated solution for XL Group underwriters across the enterprise to collaborate, access external data, and leverage policy processing systems in order to evaluate and price risks and create quote proposals and policy documentation. The teams will achieve increased productivity gains (up to 40%) from using a common underwriting workstation integrated with multiple policy admin and back-end systems.

The project will provide efficiency gains in the short term.  In the long term, the improved capture and storage of risk data will provide XL underwriters and actuaries with a wealth of information to evaluate and modify their underwriting decision and pricing algorithms.

 "XL Group is a leading example of a forward-thinking company that is seizing the abundance of data, and combining it with the increased power of modern analytical tools to create data-powered underwriting across the enterprise. We congratulate XL on this recognition and are proud of the role FirstBest has played in this transformational project," said FirstBest Founder and CEO John Belizaire.

About FirstBest
FirstBest® Systems is the leading provider of insurance software solutions that help American and international 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 $9 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, IWIF, ICW Group Insurance Companies 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.

FirstBest is a registered trademark of FirstBest Systems, Inc. FirstBest Front Office Suite, FirstBest UMS, Underwriting Management System, FirstBest UMS Mobile,  FirstBest Agent, FirstBest AppReader and FirstBest BA Studio are trademarks of FirstBest Systems, Inc.

SOURCE FirstBest Systems, Inc.