We are excited to announce a new partnership with Guidewire, which will soon power Columbia Insurance Group’s core business, simplify our IT operations and help deliver additional value to you as agents as well as to your clients and our employees.

We selected Guidewire InsuranceSuite on Guidewire Cloud as our next technological platform to ensure we continue to serve you to the best of our ability. We plan to implement it for all lines of business individually by state, with the first state planned for 2025.

It also means Columbia will soon provide you even more options for automation, real-time processing and the ability to pair embedded data insights with Columbia’s trusted, superior customer service.

“We selected Guidewire because we needed to modernize our technology platform to meet our long-term business strategy needs,” said Lisa Wharton, Columbia’s vice president and chief information officer. “Guidewire is the leading insurance software provider in the world. It is ahead of others in functionality, focus on research and development, and support, just to name a few.”

According to Todd Ruthruff, Columbia’s president and chief executive officer, this is an essential move to meet the changing market demands and ensure Columbia’s exceptional service to our agency partners remains outstanding.

“We understand the need to evolve our technology capabilities so we can enhance the ease of doing business and reduce transactional friction,” Ruthruff said. “We are excited about the new capabilities Guidewire will bring to our agency partners and our Columbia team members as well.”

Wharton agreed. “It is truly a monumental time for Columbia, and Guidewire is a key part of that plan. It offers a new, innovative approach to implement emerging technologies in an expedient fashion,” she said. “We are confident in our plan to deliver a state-of-the-art system that will provide a better experience with less transactional friction, higher efficiency and improved speed to market.”

To stay up to date on details of the rollout, watch your mailbox and inboxes for upcoming issues of The Flag, Columbia’s newsletter.