Case Study: FICOH

The Business Challenge

As a leading insurance carrier, FICOH recognized the need for the automation of tasks within their legacy environment. Due to the nature of FICOH’s corporate environment, they required a trusted partner to help them identify valuable IT projects and manage numerous IT engagements.

FICOH’s first goal was to implement an automated web-based system that would allow them to improve their internal business processes by extending their internal legacy systems out to agents. This would allow instant adjudication of 80 percent of insurance claims, resulting in increased efficiencies

Our Approach

zed recognized the importance of developing a tool that employees would be able to easily use, and that would help decrease training costs and increase efficiency. For this project, zed designed, developed, and implemented the Commercial Underwriting e-Business (CUWeB) application and website solution. The resulting CUWeB application is a work flow automation and e-business system for commercial underwriting that extends the capabilities of FICOH’s legacy systems, while providing a clean, browser-based interface for insurance agents. FICOH staff and agents use the system to submit insurance applications online. Once an application is submitted, CUWeB compiles the appropriate information into a package that is sent to the company’s legacy mainframe system. This system then creates and prints the insurance policies and other legal documents. The final CUWeB solution has over 80 screens to capture information from seven lines of business, and provides a user-friendly, highly efficient, web-based tool.

We were experiencing a significant backlog of COBOL project work that needed to be completed, but our internal resources were already working at full capacity. Working remotely, zed put an experienced team quickly in place to ensure the backlog was fully eliminated saving us significant time and effort.

Jim Blankenship
AVP Applications, FICOH

As a result of our successful collaborative relationship, FICOH has also leveraged zed’s expertise to complete numerous IT engagements, allowing zed to function as an extension of FICOH’s internal IT team. zed’s established COBOL team—including senior COBOL Programmers and an assigned Project Manager—works remotely from our St. John’s, Newfoundland head office to complete outstanding COBOL maintenance work for FICOH. This remote relationship for legacy system programming has proved so successful that our COBOL team is now completing a third phase of maintenance programming work for FICOH.

The Outcome

The relationship between FICOH and zed continues to be successful on new IT engagements. The CUWeB system has been successfully adopted by all FICOH staff and agents, and has led to the majority of insurance claims being adjudicated immediately, allowing employees to focus their time on more challenging and complex claims. zed continues to work with FICOH on the development of enhancements to the CUWeb application, including Personal Lines Agency Collaboration for E-business (PLACE), an extension of the functionality currently provided by CUWeb to provide administrative and underwriting support for applications submitted through Agency Collaboration.

FICOH continues to rely on zed for many of their IT needs throughout the organization through the ongoing outsourcing of a team of COBOL programmers to resolve FICOH’s backlog of COBOL project work. Through our partnership with FICOH, zed has developed a detailed understanding of the organization, and continues to help identify key areas where FICOH can benefit from the appropriate application of technology. As a trusted advisor, we also assist FICOH in achieving corporate buy-in on many of their new projects.

About FICOH
Established in 1911, First Insurance Company of Hawaii (FICOH) is Hawaii’s largest property and casualty insurance carrier, offering a full spectrum of both commercial and personal line policies for people and businesses, delivered through a network of 28 independent insurance agencies throughout the islands.

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