Universal Insurance Holdings of North America

CGI and Universal: A working partnership

"We have a true working partnership with CGI. (…) They can handle the touch and feel of the business. (…)They are flexible and accessible. We are relying on CGI’s expertise and resources to move forward."

Lora Rees, Senior Vice-President, Operation,
Universal Insurance Holdings of North America

Securing a ten-year Business Process Services (BPS) outsourcing agreement with Universal Insurance Holdings of North America was quite a coup for CGI, whose expertise in insurance solutions was pressed into service to support the company in its major expansion.

Founded more than 30 years ago, Universal Group has become a leading property and casualty insurance company in Puerto Rico. In 2004, it expanded its market and formed the local insurance group known as Universal Insurance Holdings of North America Inc. (UIHNA) headquartered in Sarasota, Florida, which provides personal property insurance in the states of Texas and Florida. With $150 million in written premium, Universal was well poised to carry out its growth initiative to expand its presence and product lines.

The Challenge
It was a business opportunity that CGI could not ignore. Having already established a solid relationship with UIHNA as their BPS provider in Fort Worth, Texas, the next logical step would be to continue the partnership and support the company in its expansion to other states. In April, 2006, CGI was awarded an initial seven-year outsourcing contract (extended in 2007 for an additional three years) to provide Universal with policy processing, accounting, billing processing, document management and technology services for the company’s personal lines book of business, leveraging CGI’s INSideOUT insurance solution suite of software. Universal’s expansion plan called for a phased approach: as the company entered new markets and became established with its homeowners product, new product lines would gradually come on stream, with the ultimate goal of delivering its Unipak bundled product—homeowners, auto and umbrella coverage—in Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. And CGI would be there to add more policies and more products to the integrated INSideOUT processing system.

The mandate required an IT business process services and operations provider with expertise and knowledge of the business and the ability operate in multiple locations. Said Lora Rees, UIHNA’s Senior Vice-President, Operation, “CGI was a good fit for us since they have the flexibility to operate in multiple locations and different time zones and they have the knowledge and expertise in some of the states involved in our expansion.” At the time of contract signing, the immediate need was to set up a policy processing facility in Tampa, Florida, which would be followed by business processing mandates for South Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. CGI and Universal were faced with aggressive implementation dates to meet expansion targets, further complicated by major changes in Florida’s insurance legislation expected to be announced in late January 2007.

The Strategy
CGI went to work immediately to set up the Tampa facility, hiring staff and providing training for the INSideOUT solution and for Universal’s required underwriting guidelines. By September 2006, after a challenging summer of data conversion from a legacy system, the facility was in full swing and CGI had succeeded in adding 140,000  Florida policies to the INSideOUT system, while ensuring a business continuity plan for disaster recovery. At the same time, CGI succeeded in processing a considerable business volume including 12,000 policies, 17,000 transactions and 26,000 calls monthly, meeting required service levels despite contending with some challenging system issues. With the conversion successfully completed, all of Universal’s agencies along with reporting and financial functions could now operate on one single system.

With the Tampa facility in place, CGI was gearing up to proceed with its business processing mandate for South Carolina just as the Florida Office of Insurance Regulations announced a new order on January 31, 2007. Under the new legislation, all cancels and non-renewals of policies in four counties affected by severe tornadoes would be rescinded. As insurance companies were interpreting the rule, a clarification was issued in February which confirmed this would apply to all counties. Notices to insureds could not be processed until the insurance companies submitted a new rate filing reflecting a reduction in premium. The new rule also caused insurance companies writing insurance in Florida to offer policyholders new payment plans. For Universal and CGI, the pressure was on to continue the expansion plan while complying with the new insurance regulations mandated by the state of Florida. Continued Rees, “We sat down with CGI to work it into our expansion plans. Together we formed a plan in stages and inserted timelines into current projects without slowing our expansion or new product line development. And the Web-enabled INSideOUT solution was able to accommodate these changes.”

Success under such trying circumstances was greatly aided by an effective Project Management Framework which played a significant role in project tracking. The use of various monitoring reports allowed the CGI team to track both the changes needed and the issues arising that could affect delivery dates. The new legislation created new processes and system changes that were all implemented without sacrificing service levels. So despite the disruption, CGI was able to assist Universal in regulation compliance while completing its mandate for South Carolina by July 2007. In the new year, CGI will work to accommodate new processing requirements for homeowners insurance in Arizona and Nevada and in Texas, where Universal will add auto and umbrella insurance in order to roll out its innovative Unipak offering.

The Technology

• Application Development Environments: Centura Team Developer, IBM VisualAge for Java, Microsoft Visual Studio
• Application Deployment Environment: Oracle, WebSphere, Windows
• Languages: Centura, Visual Basic, JAVA, Aion, Smalltalk
• Technologies: HTML/JSP, XML, Servlets, .NET, Citrix server and Avaya VolP

The Results
In undertaking its growth initiative, Universal has found a valued partner in CGI, whose INSideOUT insurance solution—which is continually being improved to offer better Web functions and better policy turnaround—is helping the company provide better service and products to its customers. Working with Universal, CGI facilitated the company’s Web site functionality by building a data transfer mechanism so that insurers can check status of their policies, make payments, request changes and print policies—a big plus for Universal. Concludes Rees, “We have a true working partnership with CGI. There is much at stake invested in their hands. We can operate without the need to hire a whole staff because they can handle the touch and feel of the business. I can reach anyone I want and CGI allows us the flexibility to come in and do our own audits. They are flexible and accessible. With CGI, we don’t lose control of our business. CGI’s flexibility is key and allows us to implement template underwriting while handling exceptions. We are relying on their expertise and resources to move us forward. ”With a policy count of 142,509 and direct written premium of over $205 million (November 2007), Universal is indeed moving forward.”