Guidewire Live launches in UK

Guidewire has launched a new service in the UK which will cut down the time it takes for insurers to assess their claims after a large weather event by mapping information about their policyholders with weather data in real time.

The cloud-based platform, Guidewire Live, is used by 30 customers in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and launched in the UK this week.

The platform integrates its technology into weather and forecasting systems.

For example if a storm hit the south coast of England, weather data could be mapped across an insurer’s policyholders so they could contact customers and ensure they have taken necessary precautions to limit damage and exposure to the storm.

Guidewire Live also allows insurers to benchmark their processes against their peers by accessing anonymous data stored in the cloud.

Guidewire said this would allow insurers to compare and improve claims processing cycle times.    

At the launch event in London on 11 December several delegates questioned whether the data held by the system could be truly be anonymous.

When asked what the minimum number of clients needed to ensure anonymity in any peer group was, Guidewire senior director new initiatives Eugene Lee said: “If [the system] can’t find at least three companies with that set of criteria, you don’t get any benchmarking metrics. It’s embedded in the software … the benchmarks that you get are averages of company averages, so even if you’re 90% of the market the most you can make up of any group is one-third or less.”

In a recent report, Guidewire product marketing manager EMEA Mark Mullin told Insurance Times: “Guidewire Live allows insurers to see, in real time, how their portfolios are impacted by major events, and also to uncover insights into emerging trends in claims and underwriting. The ability to compare and contrast the performance of insurer business units, territories, and to compare them to peers, is extremely powerful information.”