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Insurers eager to develop their digital capabilities have the option to wrap systems of engagement around their legacy systems or to go directly to modern core processing systems that enable greater reach into the back office. Vlocity, Salesforce.com’s insurance vertical functionality partner (both companies are based in San Francisco), is supporting a best-of-both-worlds approach through a strategic partnership with Insurity to integrate to the Hartford-based vendor’s core processing, integration and analytics solutions.
Ron Young, VP and General Manager, Insurance, Vlocity.
“This alliance makes sense,” comments Matthew Josefowicz, president and CEO of research and analyst firm Novarica (Boston). Assuming they can execute effectively, a new cloud-based provider with strong multichannel and customer engagement focus gains access to deep insurance experience and a large customer base, and a solid industry player is able to offer next-generation digital capabilities to its customers.”
“If this partnership is successful, it may indicate that there’s still room for a best-of-breed strategy in a predominantly suite-oriented world when uniting digital with core and data analytics,” Josefowicz adds.
Donald Light, head of Celent’s (Boston) North America Insurance practice characterizes the partnership as, “a signal that Insurity wants to pursue an open architecture in terms of finding solutions that solve problems for their customer base, as well potentially offering solutions that would solve problems for Vlocity and Salesforce’s customer base.”
Marrying Robust Front and Back End Capabilities
“It is about marrying our rich digital omnichannel front-office capabilities with the deep product capabilities robust of the back office, and driving from a customer or agent perspective versus a policy perspective” comments Ron Young, VP and General Manager, Vlocity. “Our approach is that if you can marry modern on both sides of the equation it’s a game-changer.”
Donald Light, Director, North America Property/Casualty Practice, Celent.
Insurity’s Oceanwide acquisition helped to make a partnership more compelling. “We’re both cloud companies,” Young notes. “In my opinion, Insurity has the best product on the market, they fit a lot of niches that we’re after, and they remain complementary in their product strategy and marketing—unlike some other core system vendors they don’t have designs on being particularly ‘CRM-ish’ in their base offering.”
Young also emphasizes the utility of linking Vlocity to Insurity’s Insurance Enterprise View (IEV) data solution. “Their IEV solution is really interesting to us not only from an analytic standpoint but especially for its integration capabilities.”
Vlocity has developed Salesforce-based applications for individual life and annuities, both personal and commercial property/casualty, and employee benefits. The vendor’s insurance clients include Principal Financial Group, MetLife, New York Life, ABD, Mercedes Benz’s insurance brokerage, Australian aggregator Compare-the-Market, and several P&C carriers. Vlocity has a total of 19 insurance customers across Life/Annuities, P&C, Health, and Employee Benefits.
The vendor focuses on three functional areas, according to Young:
Call center services;
Solutions for agency forces;
Distribution/channel management;
Digital insurance
So far, Vlocity’s insurance clients have been large life insurers, including Principal (Des Moines), New York Life and MetLife (both of New York).
Lani Cathey, SVP, Insurity.
Insurity has over 100 property/casualty insurance clients and focuses on modernization/transformation issues. “Providing targeted, effective and efficient policy and plan service interactions acros all channels is what strengthens customer relationships,” comments Lani Cathey, SVP, Insurity. “Our work with Vlocity will bolster our own suite of core processing solutions, including our Insurance Enterprise View data solution, tapping into specialized data repositories and insurance enterprsise systems built on industry standards.”
Vlocity is an important addition to Insurity’s partner community because its solutions leverage the omnichannel capabilities of Salesforce, which Cathey characterizes as the number-one CRM solution. “Many of our customers are already Salesforce users, and Vlocity’s insurance-specific expertise will deliver an enhanced solution enabling them to differentiate their customer experience,” she says.
A unified customer experience relies on gathering data from multiple systems and sources, and integration with Insurity’s IEV solution will empower Vlocity to streamline data access with one integration point, Cathey adds.