Gerber Life Insurance will receive an Impact Award from the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council, a peer community of hundreds of insurance industry CIOs. Fifty CIO council members reviewed dozens of case studies to select the winners for the 8th annual awards.
Gerber Life developed a digital sales and underwriting system to support the direct-to-consumer channel. Custom built over four years, the system has supported 7-10% annual growth in the direct business, along with a 72% reduction in underwriting time and a 75% improvement in speed to market.
“Gerber Life’s digital-optimized core system is a great example of the impact that technology investments are driving for insurers,” says Matthew Josefowicz, President/CEO of Novarica and moderator of the Council.
“The creation of this new platform has supported the expansion of our current distribution capabilities, and enabled the creation of new ones, all aligned with the customer experience expected by today’s consumers,” says Eric Bulis, SVP of Operations & CIO at Gerber Life. “The platform provides a utility-like capability that underpins our digital and agent-based distribution strategies for the foreseeable future. It would not have been possible without close alignment across sponsoring business units and their contributing associates.”
Gerber Life’s case study, along with case studies of seven other winners, and more than 25 additional cases considered for Impact Awards, was published this week in Novarica’s 8th Annual Best Practices Case Study Compendium. Novarica has published more than 200 case studies through this program since 2012.
About the Novarica Impact Awards
The Novarica Research Council Impact Awards are the largest purely peer-juried awards in insurance technology. Council members vote annually to recognize the efforts of their peers to use technology to drive business value in digital, data/analytics, core systems, and IT operations. No vendors, consultants, journalists, or members of the Novarica team participate in the selection committee, making the Novarica Impact Awards distinctive in being a purely peer-juried award.
The Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council is a free, moderated, knowledge-sharing community of more than 300 insurer CIOs and senior executives. In addition to recognizing successful initiatives through the Impact Awards, members participate in anonymized studies and private, vendor-free events.
The Council is managed by Novarica, a research and advisory firm that helps more than 100 insurers make better decisions about technology projects and strategy through published research, advisory services, and consulting on IT strategy, benchmarking, project assurance, capability and organizational assessments, and vendor selection.
About Western & Southern Financial Group
Founded in Cincinnati in 1888 as The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, Western & Southern Financial Group, Inc. (Western & Southern), a Fortune 500 company, is now the parent company of a group of diversified financial services businesses. Its assets owned ($54 billion) and managed ($25.3 billion) totaled $79.3 billion as of March 31, 2019. Western & Southern is one of the strongest life insurance groups in the world. Its seven life insurance subsidiaries (The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, Western-Southern Life Assurance Company, Columbus Life Insurance Company, Gerber Life Insurance Company, Integrity Life Insurance Company, The Lafayette Life Insurance Company, and National Integrity Life Insurance Company) maintain very strong financial ratings. Other member companies include Eagle Realty Group, LLC; Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc.;1 IFS Financial Services, Inc.; Touchstone Advisors, Inc.;1 Touchstone Securities, Inc.;2 W&S Brokerage Services, Inc.;2 and W&S Financial Group Distributors, Inc. Western & Southern is the title sponsor of six major community events every year, including the Western & Southern Open, a premier event in the U.S. Open Series played each August by the world’s top-ranked professional male and female tennis players.
1 A registered investment advisor.
2 A registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC.
Review our current financial ratings.
