When Wayne Umland joined Glatfelter Insurance Group nine years ago as executive vice president and CIO, the privately owned insurance broker managed one major program: selling accident/sickness policies and property/casualty products to volunteer fire/emergency services departments. Today, the company offers products in three additional markets—hospice and home healthcare, special districts, and small municipalities.
“When I got here, the company was growing phenomenally,” Umland recalls. “The top leaders knew they needed to have more than just a little MIS shop and start thinking strategically about IT.”
Based in York, Pa., Glatfelter is a managing general agency that contracts with carriers to serve as their underwriting, policy writing, and claims arm. Although not a carrier itself, Glatfelter performs the same functions as a carrier, such as qualifying and accepting risks during the underwriting process, issuing real-time quotes, developing new products, paying claims, and working with independent agents in the field.
“Because we operate and report premium and statistics as a carrier, we also need to have all the systems any carrier would have,” Umland says. “The direction I received when I joined the company was to build an infrastructure that could help us be successful going forward.”
To that end, Umland and his 50-member IT team are in the middle of a multiyear project to implement a single property/casualty policy administration system. Glatfelter selected Insurity’s Commercial Intellisys system to handle underwriting, rating/quote, workflow, and policy-issuance functions for approximately $275 million of business. The project’s first phase—implement the system in the hospice and home healthcare business—was completed in November 2005. Phase two, in progress, involves implementing the system for the company’s largest program, volunteer fire/emergency services. It is scheduled for completion by November 2006.
Once the Insurity solution is fully implemented, Glatfelter will have one front-end rating and underwriting system rather than the six systems it currently operates. In addition to eliminating workflow redundancies, improving productivity, and reducing costs, the single platform will allow the company to provide agents with online access to its system.
While no stranger to helping companies implement new systems, Umland did not begin his career in IT. After receiving an undergraduate degree in German from Upsala College in New Jersey in 1971, Umland wanted to work for an international company and earn his MBA. Jobs at global firms were scarce, however, and he ended up working for Aetna in its group pensions department in Hartford.
In 1977, Umland moved to Philadelphia to work for Colonial Penn. Although still working on the business side, he began serving as a liaison between his department and IT. In the mid-1980s, Florida Power and Light purchased Colonial Penn, and the company’s new CIO persuaded Umland to move over to IT and help him automate and streamline back-end and data-entry functions. After a second sale to Leucadia National, Umland began helping the next new CIO streamline front-end systems and applications.
In 1997, he received a call from a national search firm looking for a CIO for Glatfelter. Knowing that Colonial Penn was being sold again (the life company to Conseco and the property/casualty company to GE), Umland decided to explore—and eventually accept—the offer to join Glatfelter.
Besides implementing a single underwriting platform, Umland and his team are repopulating the company’s data warehouse and creating desktop tools using business objects to help users quickly access and analyze critical business data. The first phase for sales and marketing was completed in first quarter 2006. The second phase, which includes building a business intelligence model for senior management, is scheduled for completion by the end of the second quarter.
Upcoming projects include turning Glatfelter’s back-end imaging system into a front-end workflow management system, replacing a legacy invoicing system, and providing ACORD XML capabilities so agents can upload and download data directly from and to their agency management system.
“I really have had free rein to implement what I think it’s going to take to keep our company ahead,” Umland says. “Management listens, it understands, and it buys into what we’re trying to do with IT. That has been really exciting.”
Sharon Baker is a freelance business writer based in Charlotte, N.C.