Midwest Family Mutual's Ron Boyd Embraces Cloud
In fact, Boyd, a longtime client of Montreal-based CGI, recently led Plymouth, Minn.-based Midwest Family Mutual ($80 million in 2009 revenue) through the implementation of the IT services firm's Edge product, a web-based policy and claims suite, as a beta client. Noting that the carrier went live on Edge in December 2009, Boyd stresses that the new system has vastly enhanced the carrier's relationship with its agents.
"We're strictly an independent agency company; we don't do any marketing directly to customers," he explains, acknowledging that the company's agents probably didn't have a high opinion of Midwest Family Mutual's website before the Edge implementation. For example, the insurer could not endorse new business online, according to Boyd. "The key to the technology that we have right now is that our agents and our employees are on the same system," he adds. "There's no different view."
Given the economic crisis that raged during the time Midwest Family was conducting the implementation, Boyd says, he is particularly proud to have rolled out the new system, and he expects the company to reap rewards from the deployment soon. "We knew we needed to do this -- it's for the long term," he comments. "If we hadn't gone through this downturn in the past two years, I'm convinced we'd be up $7 million or $8 million more in premium rather than flat or no growth."
But Boyd shares credit for the decision to pursue the new platform. He says he often consults with department heads, including those for underwriting, marketing and accounting, for decisions both related and not related to technology. Technology decisions are handed over to an IT director, who works with a staff of six, for implementation.
"I'm a buy-versus-build-type guy," Boyd notes. "We're not large enough that we can develop the software we bought from CGI off the shelf. [Buying] provides much more value on a much faster timetable than we could develop on our own." (continued on next page)
Midwest Family had previously leveraged the CGI relationship from an earlier implementation to deploy the vendor's INSideOUT policy and claims system in 2001, using Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based Citrix Systems to access the platform remotely, Boyd relates. (The new CGI platform eliminates the need to log in via Citrix, he notes.) The goal of the initial INSideOUT deployment was to move the carrier to a more cloud-based environment, with less staff located at a smaller headquarters. The move earned Midwest Family accolades -- and Boyd a slot as one of Insurance & Technology's Tech-Savvy CEOs in 2008 -- and continues to pay dividends, both in terms of environmental friendliness and employee productivity.
"We see our office as located more in the cloud rather than in Plymouth," Boyd says. "There are some pluses of collaboration that you get in that office environment, and you can miss that. But you have to be intentional about using the tools that are out there, like GoToMeeting [Citrix], VOIP and instant messaging."
Robust collaboration enabled by technology, therefore, is a hallmark of Midwest Family, adds Boyd, who notes that Edge features instant messaging capabilities. In addition, Boyd says, social networking tools have helped the company keep its agents up to date on new product developments. "We're doing much more with our agents so they know what the hot deals are, where the product development is coming from, where the next opportunity is from a sales perspective," he says. "But with the ultimate customer, we're not doing enough of that, and that's probably where we're heading next."
In the meantime, as Midwest Family moves further into the cloud with the web-based Edge system, Boyd again is reevaluating the firm's physical facilities strategy. When the company moved its headquarters from its original 20,000-square-foot office in Minnetonka to the current 4,000-square-foot facility in Plymouth, it decided to make Plymouth its location for backup servers, Boyd relates. The carrier's primary servers continued to be located at web hosting services provider US Internet's Minnetonka facility. But if a catastrophe were to affect the area, both Minnetonka (which is well backed up, according to Boyd) and Plymouth, due to their proximity to one another, are likely to be affected, he concedes.
As a result, "We're thinking seriously about moving our Plymouth location to other US Internet sites in Kansas City, Des Moines or Milwaukee," Boyd reports. "We're always looking at ways to improve our disaster recovery strategy, though we're quite happy with what we have now."
Technology Is as Technology Does
Boyd has been in the insurance business for more than 25 years, and he is well aware of how the market changes with technological advances. He notes with pride that he's been able to guide Midwest Family through three different CGI implementations that make the company more efficient and lean.
"Our expense ratio as a company is down in the 25 range," he says. "That rivals a lot of the largest insurance carriers in the nation. We stay close to our customer, and technology's been a big piece of that action."
True to that tradition of technology innovation, and like many property and casualty insurers, Boyd sees the potential in mobile to help Midwest Family acquire new customers and retain existing ones with improved speed to market. "We've had discussions about how we could implement mobile with our employees in the field," he explains.
"Speed sells insurance, and not much is done across the kitchen table these days," Boyd continues. "[Consumers] can go to the Internet and buy [insurance]. Making sales at the other opportune times is something we're always looking at."
Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio
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