International Programs from Zurich wins big at U.S. Insurance Awards

Zurich North America collected some hardware at the 2023 U.S. Insurance Awards, including the Insurance Underwriting Team of the Year award for a digital solution benefiting its International Programs customers.

The awards, sponsored by Business Insurance, were announced during a live ceremony in New York on July 19.

Zurich was a finalist for two for the 11 awards announced that night, winning the underwriting team award for its Exporter Solutions Digital Platform, which was created for the increasing number of domestic businesses that are sending products and people overseas but do not have physical locations or employees based overseas. The platform makes it possible for Zurich-appointed brokers to secure international coverage online for qualifying domestic customers in about 15 minutes. It replaces a process that sometimes entailed a flurry of phone calls and emails involving broker, underwriter and client after a broker learned of a client’s overseas plans and the client learned that their existing domestic policies needed to be supplemented. The Exporter Solutions platform enables the purchase of a multi-year policy with simplicity and speed.

The award honored a team that included Andy Zoller, Head of International Programs from Zurich (IPZ); Spring Uphoff Neely, Head of IPZ Strategy and Execution; Cody Griffin, Head of IPZ Casualty; Laura Beth Beattie, IPZ Casualty Regional Leader; John Diaz, Chief Operating Officer for Middle Market; Travis Dominguez, Data Governance Consultant; Jeff Gallimore, Chief Operating Officer for U.S. National Accounts; and Soo Choi, Strategic Operations Leader for IPZ.

Uphoff Neely and Griffin (in photo above, with award presenter Danielle Lenzi of Rudin Management Co. on the left) accepted the award on behalf of the team, and several team members attended the event.  It’s the second year in a row that IPZ has been honored with an award at this annual Business Insurance event.

After the ceremony, Zoller credited collaboration of colleagues across businesses and functions including IT, Claims, Legal, Technical Underwriting, Compliance, Operations and beyond for the platform’s creation and successful launch.

“It was a true Team Zurich approach, which helped bring this innovative tool to the market and secured this prestigious award,” Zoller said. “We’re very excited to be up here for the second year in a row and so honored, because it is our stated goal to be digital leaders in the international insurance space.”

Zurich also was a finalist for the Community Outreach Project of the Year in the Pro Bono and Volunteer category. More than half of the in-house lawyers in Zurich North America’s Legal Services Department volunteer every year. In 2022 alone, Zurich staffed over 150 volunteer shifts and co-hosted various pro bono clinics, assisting Afghan refugees, senior citizens, people with disabilities, veterans, small business owners and people struggling to overcome criminal records, among others.

Zurich’s Innovation Award winners

During the ceremony, Zurich also accepted two Innovation Awards that Business Insurance announced in June.

Zurich’s International team won here too, in this case for its API Connector Solution, an application program interface that enables Zurich’s systems to exchange data seamlessly with the customer’s Risk Management Information System. This seamless data flow saves risk managers hours of manual data processing and reduces long email chains where spreadsheets are exchanged, downloaded, updated, uploaded and reconciled. Enabling this seamless data flow improves accuracy and timeliness of information and gives risk managers a fuller, real-time picture of their international exposures and program status.

“Our API Connector is state of the art,” Zoller said. “We’re excited to see what that can do for the industry.”

Zurich’s other Innovation Award was for its Impact Re, Ltd., sustainability captive, a member-owned, Zurich-fronted group captive. Impact Re was designed to help risk managers not only optimize their workers compensation, general liability and motor programs, but also to help them make progress on their individual sustainability objectives. Impact Re starts with a standard group captive structure, then folds in access to a wide range of sustainability-oriented services from Zurich Resilience Solutions, such as a baseline carbon emissions report, climate change modeling and energy efficiency testing.

Gallimore accepted the award on behalf of Dawn Hiestand, Head of Captives for Zurich North America. Gallimore explained that Hiestand could not attend the ceremony because she was meeting with the captive consultant who has been instrumental in rolling out Impact Re and other Zurich captive projects.

“Dawn wanted to relay her sincere appreciation for both the award and market impact that this is showing,” Gallimore said.

Profiles of the winners of both the U.S. Insurance Awards and Innovation Awards will appear in the September edition of Business Insurance.