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Christopher Maguire Prioritizes IT at Philadelphia Insurance Companies

Newly appointed COO Christopher Maguire will oversee the delivery of straight-through processing and the establishment of manufacturing-standard capabilities in Philadelphia Insurance Companies' IT organization.

In his new role as COO of Philadelphia Insurance Companies ($1.6 billion in 2007 premium income), Christopher Maguire, who also holds the titles of EVP and chief underwriting officer, plans to leverage the Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based P&C company's innovative technology capabilities to drive further growth and competitive differentiation.

According to Maguire, while most insurers have focused on building online quoting capabilities that they bolt onto a legacy environment, Philadelphia Insurance currently is working to provide agents with straight-through processing (STP) for existing business, such as renewals and endorsements. "[Most insurers] have really not dealt with the huge book of business that they transact ... with agents on a daily basis," Maguire says. "We are taking this approach because we believe it will differentiate us from our competitors -- and because we have a technology platform that enables us to do it."

Maguire estimates that the STP servicing capabilities will go live within the next three months and that real-time new business rating, quoting and issuance capabilities will follow in six to eight months. "We issue a policy to a customer in 10 days and issue endorsements to agents in the same time frame," Maguire notes. "We have a 24-hour turnaround for more than 50 percent of our business."

Maguire is also working with CIO Frank Giardina to drive manufacturing-like capabilities in the carrier's IT organization in order to enable more-nimble sourcing. "We want to be able to determine down to single units of work how much work can be done by the department on a daily, weekly and monthly basis," he comments.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio

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