Guiding the successful introduction of Guidewire with P&V

PwC steps in to help one of Belgium’s insurance leaders gain maximum value from its investment and future-proof its multi-channel business.

Fostering growth through digitalisation

Long gone are the days when an organisation whose core business isn’t IT development had the skills and resources to build all their technological assets in house. Well aware of the need not just to digitalise, but to support open architecture and connect to external ecosystems to foster growth, P&V, a cooperative insurance group that works exclusively in Belgium, sought a platform to support its ambitions, firstly to respond to the development of a new business model for its non-life claims centre. The system had to be not just robust, but help improve the overall agility and therefore competitiveness of the business. After some research, it opted for the property and casualty (P&C) industry platform Guidewire

Fostering growth through digitalisation

Facing failure and turning it around

“Looking to tailor the platform to our own needs and adapt to our local situation, we had to deviate from the base package, making the implementation complex, challenging and costly,” recalls Johan Dekens, Member of P&V’s Executive Committee. After two years, and facing issues, several parties involved in the project lost confidence in it. 

“We really struggled with it. And there weren’t many successful examples of its introduction on the market for us to learn from,” Johan Dekens notes. But the firm was aware that at some point it needed to move on from its ancient legacy system. 

“We needed to deliver on our promises. PwC played a key role in helping us achieve that.”

Johan DekensMember of the Executive Committee, P&V
Restoring confidence to move forward

Restoring confidence to move forward

“We had to make some drastic changes. I’d always been involved in change management, culture change management and internal communications, which was a great asset to leverage for me to initiate the required change,” Johan Dekens explains.

PwC was asked to get on board and to support the new journey. He adds, “I knew our first priority was to restore confidence in the programme, not just the confidence of those working on it, but the entire firm. We needed to deliver on our promises. PwC played a key role in helping us achieve that.”

Working toward a common goal

One of the reasons that Johan Dekens believes that the team, which includes P&V experts, PwC and a number of other parties, has been able to make real progress is teamwork. “We’ve about 100 - 150 people directly involved in the project and everyone has to really work as one team and believe we can do it. We’ve fostered a really collaborative spirit with PwC and we’re all working toward a common goal,” Johan Dekens enthuses. 

Johan Dekens firmly believes that working together successfully means having open and honest communication. “It’s important that everyone has an open mindset, that says when things go wrong and that we work on solving them together. We’ve found PwC to have that,” he says. And he goes on, “that we’re able to have candid conversations means we can make decisions quickly.”

Delivering on promises

Indeed, he describes PwC as a great delivery machine that has the technical skills, combined with good leadership and real ownership of the project and an open mindset, all the ingredients he sees as important to success. “We’re now at the top of the mountain,” he explains. “We’ve worked hard to get here and we can see over the other side to be able to leverage the immense investment we’ve made.” 

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, the project was able to deliver on almost all its expectations; testament to the determination of the team and sense of responsibility of everyone involved.

Delivering on promises

Creating an exceptional customer experience

As a result of the business transformation, including the implementation of the Guidewire suite, P&V is today considered to be one of the better players in the market for claims handling in terms of customer satisfaction.

“We’re looking to offer a customer journey that exceeds that of the competition. We want to make sure that we can move faster, that we can bring new products to market faster and adapt existing offerings quickly too. We’re now better placed to make that happen, however challenging it’s been,” Johan Dekens states.

Laying the foundations for the future

Laying the foundations for the future

The final piece of the puzzle for the current line of business was added through the successful opening of the platform to brokers to enable them to buy P&V insurance policies via Guidewire. To face the challenges of the future, P&V’s now moving its Guidewire ecosystem to the cloud, enabling it to be more versatile and safeguard its competitive advantage, thanks to frequent upgrades and simplified maintenance.

The finalisation of the project will lay the building blocks for the future development of additional lines of business, which should then prove to be a much smoother process. And it’s looking at PwC to be a strategic partner for that; to help other business areas decide what they could achieve with the platform and help implement in a way that enables them to achieve their goals.

Contact us

Xavier Verhaeghe

Xavier Verhaeghe

Partner, Technology Consulting, PwC Belgium

Tel: +32 495 59 08 40

Connect with PwC Belgium