CLIENT OVERVIEW

Since 1947, Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho has provided a full range of insurance products to families, farms, and businesses. The largest property and casualty insurer headquartered in Idaho, it expanded into Washington in 2023 as Western Community Insurance Company, holds an A (Excellent) AM Best rating, and is a 2025 Best Place to Work in Idaho honoree.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho knew that to remain competitive in the market, it needed to streamline system upgrades and be able to more rapidly bring enhancements and new products to market. To achieve this goal, the insurer decided to modernize its on-premises InsuranceSuite instance by migrating to GWCP.

By upgrading to GWCP, Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho aimed to harness the power of cloud, seamlessly adopt the platform’s latest innovations via the SaaS solution, modernize its core systems to enable better agility, and provide a more modern user experience for internal and external stakeholders. Quickly achieving these benefits was important to the insurer, so the team stewarding the complex project devised an ambitious timeline of 12 months from inception to go-live.

SOLUTION OFFERED

Having worked with ValueMomentum on other projects, Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho knew that not only did ValueMomentum have a keen understanding of its business goals and the processes powering the property and casualty insurance life cycle, but also, as a Guidewire Consulting partner at the Select level, it had the technical expertise and knowledge of Guidewire systems required for the project.

ValueMomentum, with a team of around 40 associates, worked proactively with Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho and Guidewire to ensure that the complexity of a cloud migration project did not interrupt the delivery of other company projects.

The teams worked across four structured phases: a one-month inception and analysis phase, a six-month period of development, nearly two months of complete regression testing and retrofitting parallel program code, and a final three-month stabilization and go-live phase.

As with any core modernization effort, the teams had to navigate competing business priorities, technical hurdles, and a unique delivery strategy on top of multiple ongoing projects. Serving as the lead implementation partner, ValueMomentum oversaw program management as well as the requirements and development phases, integrations, and quality assurance.

Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho’s team led the project management office, architectural oversight, data solutions, and deployment coordination. After the successful migration of PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ClaimCenter, and Contact Management to GWCP, ValueMomentum’s team led performance testing and asynchronous quote implementation and crafted a new approach for file mediation services.

“ValueMomentum brought commitment, expertise, and a one-team mindset — critical to delivering this program successfully,” said Shilynn Francisco, vice president of Information Systems at Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho. “On complex projects like this, hitting the target date is rare. ValueMomentum partnered with our team and Guidewire to deliver on time and achieve the results we were seeking.”

“This modernization has strengthened our technology foundation so we can better support the communities we serve across Idaho and Washington.”

VALUE DELIVERED

Thanks to collaboration across all of the teams involved, the project was successfully completed within the planned 12-month period. By migrating to GWCP, Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho projects a 40% increase in speed to market for new products. The migration has also simplified updates, enabling the insurer to quickly leverage new Guidewire capabilities and freeing up IT resources to focus on other strategic business initiatives.

“This modernization has strengthened our technology foundation so we can better support the communities we serve across Idaho and Washington,” Francisco said. “With Guidewire, we can adopt new capabilities with each release, keeping our products at the forefront of the industry and making our customers’ lives easier every day.”

Investing in a modern, cloud-based core platform has streamlined operational tasks like hardware maintenance, environment management, security patching, and testing. Farm Bureau Insurance Company of Idaho has already seen a reduction in overhead expenses, better agility to respond to market changes, and accelerated upgrade time with reduced cost.