Southern Trust Insurance Company, a personal and business insurance provider, and Guidewire Software, Inc., a provider of software products to Property and Casualty insurers, announced that Southern Trust has selected Guidewire InsuranceNow to modernize its technology platform and transform the way it does business. The company plans to begin implementing InsuranceNow’s All-in-One functionality for its Business Owners Policy line of business in South Carolina, with other states and lines of business to follow.

“We believe Guidewire InsuranceNow will make it easier for our agents and policyholders to do business with us, streamline policy processing, and access information in our books of business better,” said Les Cole, president, Southern Trust.

“InsuranceNow will simplify our system landscape by reducing the number of systems we have to support, thereby enabling us to focus on more value-added services to the business, especially business intelligence,” said Jerry Johns, vice president, Information Technology, Southern Trust. “We plan to grow the company, so InsuranceNow and the cloud are strategic parts of our future, helping ensure business continuity by enabling us to scale up quickly through the redundancy and strength of Amazon Web Services as a cloud platform. We will also be more flexible and maneuverable and better able to go after other market segments and states.”

InsuranceNow will enable Southern Trust to:

• Enhance operational efficiency and productivity throughout the organization by standardizing policy administration, billing management and claims handling processes on a cohesive technology platform;

• Allow current IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives to support the business; and

• Increase speed-to-market and business agility, as well as reduce system maintenance costs, by leveraging cloud technology.

“We are pleased to welcome Southern Trust to the Guidewire customer community,” said Steve Sherry, chief sales officer, Guidewire Software. “We applaud the company’s mission to evolve its technology foundation so it can continue addressing the unique needs of its agents and policyholders. We are excited to begin our work together.”