Canal Insurance Deploys Guidewire Systems

Canal Insurance Company, a provider of commercial trucking insurance, and Guidewire Software, a developer of solutions to property and casualty and workers’ compensation insurers, announced the full deployment of Guidewire ClaimCenter.

With the completion of the deployment, which began with a group of pilot users in late September, the entire Canal claims organization is using Guidewire ClaimCenter for all claim transactions and activities. ClaimCenter manages physical damage, cargo, and liability losses for Canal’s core commercial trucking business.

“Our claims professionals are very excited to be using Guidewire ClaimCenter,” said Daniel Walker, vice president of claim operations, Canal Insurance. “The new system brings our claims process into the twenty-first century, and helps our people complete their work faster and more easily, while maintaining our service quality standards.”

Guidewire ClaimCenter is delivered as a complete claims system suitable for use by any insurer. As a specialist in a highly complex line of insurance, Canal Insurance had a large number of additional requirements. During the implementation project, ClaimCenter was extended to meet these requirements, including:

— Extension of the data model and screens to capture and display exactly the information desired by end users.

— Additional business rules to implement desired claim handling processes, including segmentation, assignment, default reserves, claim-specific work plans, escalations, and alerts.

— Tailoring of all correspondence templates to Canal’s specifications.

— Integration to the policy administration system to provide detailed coverage information to claim handlers.

— Integration to ISO Claimsearch and to Metropolitan Reporting for automatic claim indexing and ordering of police reports.

— Integration to back-end accounting systems to ensure smooth handling of financial transactions.

Canal Insurance deployed Guidewire ClaimCenter on the Apache Tomcat application server and the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database management system, both running on the Windows 2000 Server operating system.

Canal has specialized in trucking insurance for more than 60 years and underwrites business in 46 states.