A Startup Success Story with Next Level Solutions

In 2019, a young, startup insurance carrier, backed by a multi-billion-dollar industry giant, set its sights on introducing a new business model that would focus on providing comprehensive insurance policies to small businesses. It had the potential to transform insurance with ambitious goals and a commitment to delivering value. Needing to make a change, the carrier embarked on a journey that would reshape their entire approach to insurance services.

The emerging carrier faced significant challenges with their existing implementation strategy – it just wasn’t yielding the results they needed to support their aggressive operating framework. 

The vision was to package commercial insurance lines for direct-to-consumer use, which would tailor policies to the specific needs of small businesses. This required a strong and experienced system integrator that could deliver on Duck Creek specific skills to create game-changing components, including a unique front-end user interface. Unfortunately, the original implementation strategy was misaligned with the carrier's business goals; resulting in business launch delays, which impacted critical benchmarks set by the firm. 

Solution

In their quest for advancement, the carrier chose to move into a partnership with Next Level Solutions (NLS), known for their insurtech proficiency, understanding of the Duck Creek Suite, and deep business acumen.

NLS began by conducting a comprehensive audit of the carrier's previous work, assessing what could be salvaged and utilized. Drawing on Duck Creek's specialized insurance technology, NLS architected a solution that leveraged out-of-the-box functionality, avoiding the need for costly custom development. This built a solid foundation of reliability and trust that would develop into a long-term partnership between Next Level Solutions and the carrier. 

Results

The partnership between the carrier and NLS generated remarkable results. The carrier saw a significant improvement in speed-to-market, with the new insurance product delivered eight weeks ahead of expectations. What began as a small working engagement, blossomed into a multi-year partnership, showcasing the carrier's confidence in NLS' capabilities.

The carrier's dedicated NLS team grew from a modest seven team members to a robust workforce of 95 full-time employees, a testament to the project's scale and success. 

In 2023, NLS achieved significant milestones for the carrier by successfully closing out 497 user stories, critical to the program's success metrics. Additionally, NLS established an intuitive quoting system, integrated seamless rate updates, improved automation across communication channels and delivered an industry-leading claims experience that allowed for highly streamlined FNOL operations. These implementations led to a best-in-class product offering and an unmatched end-user experience.

Another standout achievement was showcased in the Quality Assurance domain, where the testing team successfully automated and significantly reduced testing time by 80% for rate updates. NLS anticipates this being reduced even further as they continue to improve automated scripts. Additionally, QA streamlined forms testing, a process that previously consumed 54 hours for manual testers. Through the use of Postman and Forms Tester, this testing time has now been optimized to a mere eight hours. These accomplishments underscore NLS' commitment to efficiency, innovation, and continuous improvement in its operations. 

The carrier, once a startup with zero direct written premium (DWP) and no market presence, transformed into a thriving entity, achieving substantial growth and market penetration. The success of the project also led to expanded work in other areas, such as Salesforce integration and DevOps implementation, further enhancing operational efficiency. 

This partnership between the carrier and NLS resulted in a significant transformation of the small business insurance landscape. By aligning their technology and business strategies with the carrier's innovative vision, NLS played a pivotal role in the carrier's journey from a motivated startup to a major player in the industry, with a DWP already exceeding $100 million and a rapidly growing presence across the country.