Specialty Lines = Special Needs

One advantage of being a startup is the leadership group has the opportunity to participate in high-level meetings to determine what the company hopes to accomplish in the long run, rather than figuring things out on the fly. In the case of Darwin Professional Underwriters, technology discussions centered on developing flexible solutions to support the specialty lines carrier's business needs, according to Bob Asensio, senior vice president and CIO for Darwin.

One of Darwin's strategies was to find a way for smaller business to be conducted over the Internet and do more than policy issuance, preparation of documents, and rating, explains Asensio. "We wanted to do things such as automate some of the underwriting activity and risk selection for lines of business where this has never happened before," he says. "Our goals were broad."

Asensio knew there were new vendors doing policy administration with features some traditional solutions couldn't offer, he recalls. So, he sought a solution that would provide what he describes as the "basic plumbing" while offering Darwin the ability to do a lot of its own configuration. With the premise that what Darwin wanted was possible, Asensio started contacting vendors. OneShield and about a dozen other vendors were sent an RFP Asensio felt was specific regarding the carrier's desire to be dynamic.

"We're always coming out with new products, and the way we approach our producers is [the business] really is a work in progress," he says. "We're not claiming we have the answer in technology, but we keep trying. We listen to what our producers say and try to make things better for them."

After a five-month selection process, Darwin chose OneShield but followed a nontraditional path, opting not to spend years developing specifications its vendor would create, Asensio reports. "We'll always be an evolving company that's looking to do things a little differently," he says.

Flexibility is a tall order for technology solutions, Asensio remarks. "I was hoping for the best of both worlds," he says. "If you look at it from the build-vs.-buy perspective, we bought a basic infrastructure that works. From the build side, we still had the ability to customize things. Our focus would be solely on implementing those business requirements as opposed to implementing technical requirements."

As the name suggests, specialty lines insurance produces different challenges for carriers. Asensio points out there are no ISO standards or ACORD forms for those lines, and the product definitions are unique. "You can go to market with a different product than any of your competitors," he says.

Because the products are changing, Asensio explains the underwriting exposure also has a tendency to change from time to time. "For instance, if you're underwriting a professional liability and a D&O for a public company, you are going to look at certain data points," he says. "Over time, those data points have changed. At one point, you would look at things such as assets and total revenue. Eventually market capitalization became a big thing to look at."

Since Darwin is a startup, the policy administration system became the linchpin for standardizing all of the carrier's technology, notes Asensio. OneShield is an Oracle application, so Darwin runs Oracle and IBM WebSphere on Linux. "That set the standard for us, and everything we've added to our portfolio uses the same type of technology," he says.

When the carrier has faced problems, Asensio indicates OneShield has been helpful in extending the product to do what Darwin needed it to do. He considers his IT staff's ability to take over the product, through the group's involvement in the project, as one other upside to the initiative. "We count on the vendor only for any core changes," he says. "For anything else, we have people here who are good at it and are self-sufficient. We aren't relying on vendor releases to add functionality. We have the tool set to do everything we need to do here."

The biggest advantage Darwin has gained from this implementation, Asensio believes, is the IT department has been able to provide the business side with the tools it has asked for. "We've been able to have a system that supports not only our internal users, but we can extend producers," he says. "Everything that has been put in front of us we've been able to accomplish. A lot of it has been done fast and under a lot of pressure. We haven't run into any dead ends yet."