The biggest epithet (and sometimes epitaph) in insurance technology is undoubtedly “legacy.” Older systems need technologists who understand that technology rather than a staff that sees the future of insurance in a different light.

While putting together his IT department at Torus in 2009, Torus Americas CIO Justin Manley didn't have the constraints that many of his competitors face. Add in the fact that his bosses at Torus “always go after the best people,” according to Manley, and the start-up company was able to lift the shackles off his IT team.

“One of the things I tried to do is not constrain myself by focusing only on this [insurance] sector,” says Manley. “I looked for people in adjacent markets—financial services—where certain technical experiences could map well to what we were doing.”

Manley himself learned his trade in other markets. He began his 20-plus years career in technology in the telecom industry before moving into financial services—but not insurance. He moved into the insurance industry eight years ago.

“We were charged [at Torus] with building a 21st century insurance company,” he says. “We did not hire people to build a legacy insurance company. I've been building consumer applications—web-based, thoughtfully designed, straight-through processing with minimal human contact if possible. That's where we've leveraged IT a lot to allow for traditional underwriting to occur with focus and precision and not necessarily incredible human growth. We've been able to grow our top line by allowing computers to do things they might not have done in days gone by.”

Two of Manley's hires came to Torus from JetBlue where they managed the low-fare airline's online reservation system.

“They are very heavy in the technology we are using,” says Manley. “I look for hunger in people that have been in a position for a while but aspire to go higher and grow. If you are willing to pay the right price you can find anybody.”

One of the challenges of being a CIO with a specialty commercial lines carrier is that it's difficult to achieve growth as competitors go after each other's customers. To make Torus stand out, Manley believes the systems should enhance the nuances in underwriting for all the different lines the carrier offers.

“We try to minimize the divergence of code and rules and the need to have a system for every single line of business,” he says. We are trying to maintain the architecture where we have a carrier layer, a line layer, and a product specific layer. Because we started from scratch we established principles: One is the data is king, and the other is integration is the queen.”

All of the systems and transactions from a financial perspective are the same, explains Manley. There is a set of data that the carrier captures and with the hub in the middle there is no point-to-point integration between any systems.

“Our claims system does not have any integration with the policy system nor does finance,” he says. “It all goes through the middle. That minimizes number of interfaces and the complexity and allows for a growing carrier to not be inhibited by the growth of a policy administration system if you need to get into a niche business at an accelerated rate of time. The definition of getting the data from that system to any other system is a defined interface. It has allowed us to grow. All the systems get their data from the hub.”

In his work with Torus, Manley is most proud of the Escape broker portal the carrier built in 2010 using Duck Creek (now Accenture) software.

“We focused on usability and design,” he says. “When a broker is putting together a package for the insured they make sure all the coverages are there. One of the last things they do is to get a quote.”

Torus looked at what its leading competitors were doing and tried to put together a better system.

“It could take you 12 minutes to get through that competitive system and brokers were asked a lot of questions that had nothing to do with rating,” says Manley. “You had to answer all kinds of questions before going into what a lot of people call the service black hole.”

Manley's developers focused on how people interact, the questions that are most important for rating and underwriting, and getting brokers a price right away.

“That's what they want,” he says. “The moment [the transaction] falls out of the underwriting box, tell them. If you are not the market for [the broker's needs], tell them. Respect that they are trying to do business.”

Torus got its system down to four minutes, explains Manley, and one way it did so was by making an asynchronous call back to the server and checking the underwriting rules and rating alongside the user even as one question was being answered and the next question was being considered.

Also, if the transaction falls back to a referral, there is a UI indication that pops up and tells the broker that their answer will cause a referral.

“In other systems, you are locked and can't change your answer,” Manley says. “You can accidentally click the wrong answer and the systems lock up. Our system allows you to make that change.”

Torus married the technology experience with the human experience, explains Manley. If a referral is made, brokers often don't hear back from the carrier for two or three days.

“The deal could be done by that point,” he says.

Torus has a 24-hour time frame to get back to the broker along with live chat functionality that has boosted a huge pickup rate, according to Manley.

The portal has been in place for three years, but Manley points out that the carrier is never satisfied with the performance.

“We built a software development team with over a dozen people dedicated to the system and adding features,” he says. “When we launched in 2010, it didn't have all the features we wanted. Like all IT projects, it had the iron triangle of time, cost, and functionality.”

Torus worked a lot with brokers in the market and soft launched the portal even though it was only about 80 percent completed.

“We and allowed brokers to give us feedback,” says Manley. “We knew what we wanted to do with the last 20 percent, but we wanted to make sure we had the priorities right. We were not building a system for us, we were building it for brokers and we let them guide that last 20 percent. We've been refining and adjusting ever since. We're never done; it's always evolving.”

Special Reports /

Building a Better IT Team for Torus

Related Stories

Recommended For You