Elephant Insurance in Production With Guidewire Billing Solution

Elephant Insurance, a direct-to-consumer writer of automobile insurance, and Guidewire Software®, a leading provider of flexible core systems to property/casualty (P/C) insurers, today announced that Elephant is in production with Guidewire BillingCenter and is realizing significant benefits from its use of the system.

Following a successful Guidewire ClaimCenter® implementation, Elephant turned its focus to replacing its billing system. As a relatively new company, the business driver for this change was not to replace an aging system, but rather to replace a system that was inflexible and could not be customized to meet the needs of Elephant’s fast-paced, highly evolving business. The system limitations resulted in numerous manual processes—an equivalent of eight extra full-time employee (FTE) resources—and hampered Elephant’s ability to provide the level of customer service it wanted.

Guidewire BillingCenter met Elephant’s out-of-the-box functionality requirements and the company knew from its ClaimCenter experience that this system would be extremely flexible, readily configurable, and would deliver the promised functionality and performance that they sought in their new billing system. Following a rapid 3.5 month deployment project that was both on time and under budget, Elephant went into production with BillingCenter.

Knowledge transferred to the team during implementation has made them self-sufficient and able to maintain and enhance the system on their own. Elephant’s IT team has rolled out additional functionality to its business users each week since initially deploying the system, including the integration of BillingCenter with its interactive voice response (IVR) system that enables customers to pay their premium invoices by phone with that information going directly into BillingCenter.  Elephant has already deployed the system in two states and is working to add a third state.

Employee morale has been a major benefactor of the new system; gone are most of the manual workarounds that existed with the old billing system. The eight FTEs previously dedicated to the manual tasks have been reassigned to more meaningful work within the company. Elephant has also gained greater functionality, improved data integrity, and most importantly, a path for future business improvement.

The benefits of Elephant’s new billing system include:

• Customer service: Online customer summary screens put all customer billing/payment information on one screen so that customer service reps can quickly and accurately answer customer questions.
• Flexibility: Across-the-board system flexibility encourages trying new things and inspires new ideas, e.g., Elephant can add new payment plans easily if they choose to do so. 
• Data Integrity: Elephant now has confidence in the quality and accuracy of system data and is able to make better business decisions.
• Self sufficiency: Elephant is able to make system changes as its business needs change.

“We have already been able to deliver a lot of functionality for our business users and we know that we have barely scratched the surface in using the power of BillingCenter,” said Tim MacAleese, deputy director of Elephant Insurance. “We are happy with every aspect of BillingCenter and its impact on our organization.”

“Elephant’s BillingCenter implementation success is a great example of an insurer who made the decision to replace its billing system and in just a few short months is realizing some newfound flexibility and operational benefits,” said Marcus Ryu, chief executive officer, Guidewire Software. “We congratulate them on their success and are excited to watch their ongoing progress.”

Guidewire BillingCenter® is a comprehensive billing and receivables management system built on the core de­sign principles of automation, control and flexibility. BillingCenter allows you to deliver insurance your way by making it easier to automate the billing lifecycle; design flexible billing, payment and delinquency plans; manage agent commissions; and enable rapid integration with external payment systems. BillingCenter is available as a standalone system or as part of the Guidewire InsuranceSuite™, and can be integrated to an insurer’s legacy systems or third party applications.

About Elephant Insurance

Elephant Insurance, founded in 2009, is a direct-to-consumer (web and phone) automobile insurance company. Headquartered in Richmond, VA, Elephant Insurance Services, LLC and Elephant Insurance Company are wholly owned subsidiaries of Admiral Group, plc. Elephant believes people who like what they do, do it better and encourages a climate of individual contributions, long-term commitment, and profitable growth. More information is available at www.elephant.com.