After two years of evaluating systems, GuideOne Insurance, one of the nation’s largest church insurers, will migrate to Insurity’s property/casualty policy administration system.

“This is a good Microsoft story,” said Insurity senior vice president for sales and marketing David Pedersen, noting that while business leaders had been impressed with Insurity’s functionality, the GuideOne IT department was very comfortable with its IBM environment and was reluctant to make a switch.

In the eleventh hour of the vendor evaluation process, the IT department still called in another IBM vendor for evaluation. “In the end, business functionality won out,” Pedersen said.

But while there was an initial technology bias, the system has been well received by the company even on the technology side, as the Microsoft-based system’s service-oriented architecture has simplified the migration of legacy applications, according to Pedersen.

The system will handle underwriting, rate/quote, workflow and policy issuance functions for GuideOne’s commercial and personal lines. GuideOne insures approximately 45,000 churches, and also insures faith-based private schools and colleges and not-for-profit senior living communities. Its personal lines include auto and homeowners policies to churchgoers, as well as life insurance policies underwritten by Kansas City Life Company.

The new system is intended to streamline GuideOne’s processes.

“As a single platform for our commercial and personal business, the new system will consolidate out infrastructure, eliminate multiple data entry and reduce expenses,” said GuideOne senior vice president and chief information officer Bob Crane. “It will also speed up policy turnaround time and help agents maximize their productivity.”

Among the functionality that impressed GuideOne was Insurity’s compliance component, Pedersen said.

“We do a lot of regulatory support,” he said, noting that the system automates coding for rate-making authorities state-by-state and maintains all rates rules and forms.

The migration is expected to be completed by the second-half of 2006. The first stage of implementation of the new system is migration of legacy applications, Pedersen said, but the system also offers functionality for future needs, such as electronic links with agents and self-service applications.