Insurance is a people business, and success is achieved by building and maintaining strong relationships. Workers’ compensation insurance specialist MEMIC is reaping the benefits of a successful relationship with a longtime trusted technology partner that helped it seamlessly expand its geographical and business reach.
Based in Portland, Maine, the MEMIC Group is comprised of the Maine Employers’ Mutual Insurance Company, MEMIC Indemnity Company and MEMIC Casualty Company. MEMIC has an annual written premium of over $400 million for more than 20,000 policyholders. DXC Technology has played a critical role in the company’s multistate and insurance-line expansion, thanks to its broad portfolio of insurance software products and business process services (BPS) offerings, vast expertise and local insurance knowledge.
A chance – and a challenge – to expand
When MEMIC was founded in 1993, the workers’ compensation insurance landscape in Maine was in turmoil. As the guaranteed market for Maine employers, the company was tasked by its board of directors to significantly reduce high injury rates and lower the nation’s highest workers’ compensation costs. By focusing on workforce safety and compassionate care for injured workers, MEMIC soon earned its reputation as an industry innovator. Today, injuries in Maine have been reduced by 50 percent and rates have been reduced by 65 percent. In addition, the company has issued double-digit dividends to their Maine policyholders for eleven straight years.
With successful business practices in place, a loss-control department that promotes employee safety services and a diligent focus on return-to-work, MEMIC was ready to grow. Greg Jamison, senior vice president of underwriting at MEMIC, says, “We were asking ourselves: Do we want to do something more than workers' comp in the state of Maine?” The answer was yes. Soon a plan was born outlining a strategic expansion of operations to new markets as a workers’ comp-only specialist, the line that MEMIC knows best.
In the highly regulated U.S. insurance industry, however, expanding into new markets is no easy task. Each state has its own regulations, including specific rules related to licensing, pricing, consumer protection and underwriting. State regulatory agencies and bureaus are continuously amending workers’ compensation rules and rates. Forms require statistical codes that need to be accurate and non-compliance could result in hefty fines.
The DXC workers’ compensation compliance team monitors the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) and Independent State Workers’ Comp Rating Bureaus websites for notifications of filings and approval circulars for rates, rules and forms to ensure MEMIC’s system is current.
The DXC compliance staff reviews the circulars in bi-weekly meetings with MEMIC’s compliance staff to determine the impact to their current production system. DXC’s compliance team reviews QA test results to ensure the rates, rules and forms are accurate and match the expected results; this is completed prior to releasing to MEMIC for their User Acceptance Testing. To ensure quality deliverables, DXC runs regression scripts to proactively identify and resolve issues. This additional help from DXC sets the stage for MEMIC to move forward with its growth initiatives.
Conquering expansion challenges
In the early 2000s, MEMIC’s ability to enter new markets was stifled by technology limitations. “We needed a partner who could expand with us and allow us to issue policies in a seamless way all across the country,” Jamison says. That’s where DXC came in.
DXC has a long-established insurance practice in every state and around the world, and is adept at tailoring its comprehensive line of insurance software products and BPS offerings to meet the disparate needs of insurers in local markets. DXC’s knowledgeable professionals keep up with the ongoing changes in requirements on a state-by-state basis to ensure the delivery of accurate and compliant policies for insurance companies.
“Every state has something different compliance-wise that you have to adhere to, and that’s where the partnership with DXC has grown over time,” Jamison says, pointing to the complexity of what it takes to issue a workers’ compensation account.
DXC, Jamison says, “became our vehicle to be able to issue multistate policies for all three of the different rating companies that we have.” Jamison says that when MEMIC started expanding its business, “we had the confidence of knowing that all states, all system BPS processes, were available to us on Day One.” DXC has not only helped MEMIC grow beyond Maine but has also supported its expansion into indemnity and casualty lines. The majority of MEMIC’s premium is on DXC-issued policies.
Among the key factors that made the expansion possible was the underlying technology running in DXC’s property and casualty BPS operations. This includes DXC’s Agency Link, which allows agents to rate, quote and issue insurance policies through the agency dashboard, guided by a set of inquiry APIs for pulling policy and billing data. DXC’s Java version of POINT IN, a policy administration system that helps insurers automate underwriting processes while reducing costs associated with underwriting. DXC is the leading provider of core insurance systems globally, led by the DXC Assure insurance software portfolio, which provides systems of record and intelligent operations across the entire insurance value chain.
Q&A with Dave Johnson
BPS Technology Delivery at DXC Technology
Strong partnership fosters growth
MEMIC has grown strategically and steadily, achieving success in many ways, including maintaining a strong financial profile that has earned an “A” rating (Excellent) from A.M. Best, the industry’s leading credit rating agency. Growth has also fueled an increase in profits, Jamison says. “We’re not a company that is looking to grow without being profitable.”
Jamison says much of the success has to do with building relationships among policyholders, injured workers and with key partners like DXC. “Our relationship focus is about how we treat our agents, how we treat our policyholders, the services that we offer them and a fair and competitive price we charge for those services,” he says. “With our approach, we see ourselves as the best value in workers’ comp.”
Jamison is very appreciative of the dedicated DXC professionals who have helped his company grow. Many DXC employees have worked with MEMIC for more than 20 years, fostering close business relationships that are valuable to supporting growth. “Everything that DXC employees do on a day-to-day basis has a direct impact on helping the employees of MEMIC be able to do our jobs efficiently and effectively,” he says.
Jamison is looking forward to MEMIC working with DXC to continue evolving and with the goal of becoming an even more data-centric company. He says, “To be data-informed, data-driven, data-augmented, data is going to play a much bigger place in the future than it has in even the recent past.”
