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Digital EditionTransforming Fragmented Policy Data
Paul Roderick, manager, claims operations, Midwest Employers’ Casualty
Midwest Employers Casualty (MEC), an operating unit of W.R. Berkley Corporation, has long been known for its excess workers compensation product offerings. But as MEC expanded into captives, fronted programs, other primary arrangements, and treaty excess-of-loss (XOL) claim management for another W.R. Berkley operating unit, a growing portion of policy and treaty data resided outside MEC’s core policy administration system.
The supporting infrastructure and operating model did not evolve at the same pace as the business itself. As a result, complex policy and treaty information became fragmented and person-dependent, while claim-to-policy data flows were not managed efficiently. Coverage records were entered inconsistently, and critical attributes — benefit states, endorsements and amendments, claim administrators, legal entities, and XOL treaty terms — were frequently not entered quickly enough.
Downstream systems could not reliably associate claims to coverage, forcing manual intervention across Claims, Actuarial, Finance, Underwriting, and IT.
The deficiencies produced both systemic failures and high-impact isolated errors. Claims handling efficiency was challenged. Account management appeared fragmented. Financial and actuarial teams were forced to recreate coverage indices outside core systems. And, perhaps most concerning, the company faced prominent regulatory risk.
The stakes were considerable. Of the affected population of policyholders, many participated in multi-state, high-premium group self-insured programs representing a substantial portion of gross written premium. These non-core programs provide coverage accommodations that are not addressable through standard excess workers compensation policies and represent a key competitive differentiator for MEC.
On the underwriting and distribution side, the absence of standardized intake procedures and automation meant policy changes, renewals, and mid-term amendments were processed internally and clearly misaligned with the standards of MEC’s core excess workers compensation product line.
At the request of MEC’s Chief Legal and Regulatory Counsel, Paul Roderick assumed ownership of the problem — a mandate that extended well beyond his formal claims operations role and required deep engagement in underwriting, reinsurance, treaty administration, and data architecture disciplines.
Rather than attempting to solve the problem with a single fix, Roderick took a multi-pronged approach designed to address critical gaps across data quality, system integration, and institutional knowledge.
He designed and implemented a policy entry exception dashboard to surface inconsistencies as they emerged. He built out an enterprise data ingestion strategy that brought structure and discipline to how external information entered MEC’s systems.
He also led the development of automated treaty data integration, eliminating one of the most persistent sources of manual intervention. He pursued alternative data sourcing strategies where primary sources were unreliable or incomplete. And he created formalized technical documentation to ensure that institutional knowledge no longer lived only in the heads of a few individuals.
Together, these initiatives eliminated data inconsistencies, reduced manual intervention across functions, and established sustained governance and quality controls across MEC’s non-core programs. &
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