A 30-year business partnership with CGI helps Commerce Insurance maintain leadership position

"As the leading provider of private passenger automobile in Massachusetts, our goal is to provide our agents and employees with services that help them perform to their highest level. Over the years we have fostered a strong relationship with CGI. Their system is robust and accurate and their team is very familiar with our internal processing systems. That is important for us."

Gerald Fels, Executive Vice President and CFO, The Commerce Group, Inc.

The Client
CGI leverages a thirty-year partnership with the Commerce Insurance Company to provide a cost-effective business processing solution.

Based in Webster, Massachusetts, Commerce Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Commerce Group Inc., is the 20 th largest private passenger automobile writer in the U.S. , with over $3 billion in assets and nearly 2,000 employees. The company's Massachusetts client base includes more than a million customers in personal automobile insurance and $90 million in direct written premiums in commercial auto insurance.

The Challenge
Commerce was seeking a strategic business partner with a local presence to provide a cost-effective business processing solution to support their large business volumes for policy processing and document management services. The company was seeking a distribution channel for independent agencies for sales and support of insurance policy transactions utilizing Web-based technology.

The Strategy
CGI leveraged its long history with the company as a reliable IT provider and in 2004, proposed a six-year contract renewal to provide full policy processing services for Commerce's Massachusetts private passenger and commercial lines customers. Given CGI's expertise in the insurance sector, knowledge of the company and regulatory environment in Massachusetts , Commerce was easily convinced of the cost-effective value of the proposal. CGI performed a technical review on behalf of the client to share technology plans and demonstrate their commitment to Commerce's objectives.

In addition to providing a stable outsourced policy-processing environment for both private passenger and commercial automobile lines, CGI is also supplying innovative tools and services, application support and maintenance and regulatory support. For example, CGI's ColloborativeEdge™ interface tool for agents is an innovation valued by Commerce, providing agencies a straight-through process for data collection for both personal and commercial automobile. It is a Web-based solution compatible with agency management systems to support back-end processing.

Other value-added support includes "Decision Support Services", an automated expert underwriting process to assist Commerce in risk management and policy retention decisions. CGI also provides a range of customization services to automate Commerce's existing workflow methodologies. Under CGI's Client Partnership Management Framework, all development initiatives are governed by ISO 9001 certified processes to ensure adherence to a disciplined approach of analysis and budget approval.

The Technology

• Mainframe: IDMS, VSAM databases; OSMVS Operating System, COBOL, CICS, IDMS languages
• CollaborativeEdge™: SQL Server database; Windows 2000 Operating System; Microsoft Visual Studio

The Results
With CGI, Commerce can count on a team of seasoned professionals with the flexibility and expertise to modify its policy processing system when needed. CGI's knowledge of Massachusetts regulatory environment is second to none, and they are highly visible at regulatory meetings to respond quickly to changes in rules and rates and adapt the system accordingly. But perhaps the most important aspect of this business partnership is that it allows Commerce to focus on its core business and maintain its leadership position in the market, providing its agents and employees with superior service levels while taking advantage of new technologies. Says Gerald Fels, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Commerce, "As the leading provider of private passenger automobile in Massachusetts , our goal is to provide our agents and employees with services that help them perform to their highest level. Over the years we have fostered a strong relationship with CGI. Their system is robust and accurate and their team is very familiar with out internal processing systems. That is important to us."