The winners of the first Novarica Research Council Impact Awards were announced at a ceremony in New York today, with Cincinnati Insurance, Allstate Financial, Great American, Capitol Insurance, and American Safety Insurance receiving top honors for their outstanding achievements in insurance industry IT initiatives and strategy.

“Over 50 CIO members of the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council voted to honor these companies, making the Impact Awards the largest peer jury-awarded recognition in the industry,” said Novarica partner and managing director Matthew Josefowicz.

The winners, which were chosen from a pool of 13 nominees as selected by a nominating committee of insurer CIOs, were selected across four categories:

• Practice, in which insurers undertook enterprise-wide IT projects;
• Quick Hit, in which insurers executed a short-term, rapid-impact IT project;
• Expansion, in which insurers expanded capabilities of existing systems;
• Transformation, in which insurers undertook long term projects that substantially transformed their organization’s IT capabilities.

Allstate Financial Technology took home the top prize for Practice, for establishing an enterprise-wide test environment which uses one algorithm to scrub data across applications.

Great American Insurance Group was the winner in the Quick Hit category, for their development of customer mobile apps to deliver self-service functionality.

Cincinnati Insurance Company was the winner in the Expansion category, for transforming how independent agents process business using ACORD XML standards and real time from agency systems.

Finally, there were two winners in the Transformation category: Capitol Insurance, which replaced multiple legacy surety systems with a single modern platform and enabled online self-service for agents; and American Safety Insurance, who consolidated all underwriting units across the company into a single system.

In addition to the presentation of the awards, the day’s proceedings included a keynote presentation by Matthew Josefowicz on the impact of IT projects, and a panel discussion with insurer CIOs who served on the committee that selected the nominees.

Also at the event, Novarica announced the publication of the Best Practices Case Study Compendium 2012, an 85-page report featuring more than 40 full case studies including the winners and nominees. A free summary of this report is available online at www.novarica.com/report_casestudycompendium2012/

About Novarica

Novarica, the research division of Novantas, provides information, insights, and perspective on markets, operations, and technology to financial services and insurance executives and project teams. The company delivers its service through published research, retained advisory services, and project-based consulting. Novarica draws its knowledge from the professional experience of its principals, the ongoing information gathering initiatives of dedicated research staff, and regular communication with industry sources through informal networks and formal Research Councils of hundreds of senior industry executives. For more information, visit http://www.novarica.com.