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Southern Farm Bureau Selects Guidewire Solution for Billing Management

Guidewire BillingCenter® to replace multiple systems and enable consistent, flexible billing practices across all business entities

RIDGELAND, Miss. and SAN MATEO, Calif., September 15, 2011: - Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company, a leading provider of Property and Casualty insurance in the U.S., and Guidewire Software®, a provider of core system software to Property/Casualty insurers, today announced that Southern Farm Bureau has selected Guidewire BillingCenter as its new billing and receivables management system. Southern Farm Bureau will use BillingCenter for all lines of business across its six regional companies including Florida, South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, Colorado, Louisiana, and its flood line of business, replacing multiple billing systems in the process.

Southern Farm Bureau will use Guidewire BillingCenter to enhance its customer service capabilities by consolidating billing systems across multiple regional companies enabling the company to better deliver consistent billing services and best practices to its customers. With BillingCenter, Southern Farm Bureau will gain the ability to:

• Reduce system maintenance costs and centralize support by eliminating multiple legacy billing systems;
• Standardize billing practices on a single system company-wide, while retaining customer service flexibility;
• Tailor payment practices and methods to customer preferences including providing support for mobile device and interactive voice response (IVR) systems for billing inquiries and transactions;
• Improve customer service capabilities by providing a single invoice to customers with multiple policies; providing real-time payment processing and complete account views; and
• Reduce billing expenses by improving billing efficiency and consistency and automating delinquency processing.

"We selected Guidewire BillingCenter because it is a state-of-the-art system built on modern technology, it includes excellent functionality out of the box, and is flexible allowing us to easily configure it to support our specific requirements," said Geoff Mercer, senior vice president of technology at Southern Farm Bureau. "Guidewire has an excellent reputation, and a great track record of recent successful billing system implementations, making them an ideal business partner for us."

"Guidewire is excited to work with Southern Farm Bureau on replacing its legacy billing systems with BillingCenter, a modern system that will enable Southern Farm Bureau to offer flexible billing options to its customers," said Marcus Ryu, chief executive officer of Guidewire. "We look forward to a long-term relationship with Southern Farm Bureau as they transform their billing operations through legacy system replacement."

Guidewire BillingCenter® is a billing and receivables management system built on the core de­sign principles of automation, control and flexibility. BillingCenter allows you to deliver insurance your way by making it easier to automate the billing lifecycle; design flexible billing, payment and delinquency plans; manage agent commissions; and enable integration with external payment systems. BillingCenter is available as a standalone system or as part of the Guidewire InsuranceSuite™, and can be integrated to an insurer’s legacy systems or third party applications.

About Guidewire Software

Guidewire Software is a provider of core system software that enables Property/Casualty insurers to deliver insurance the way they want to. Guidewire builds high quality software that consistently works as promised. Designed for maximum flexibility and scalability, Guidewire solutions give insurers the capability to deliver excellent service to policyholders and agents and increase market share—while lowering operating costs. Guidewire InsuranceSuite™, consisting of Guidewire PolicyCenter®, Guidewire ClaimCenter® and Guidewire BillingCenter®, spans the entire insurance lifecycle—underwriting and policy administration, claims management, and billing. Guidewire is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices in Beijing, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Munich, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, and Toronto. For more information, visit www.guidewire.com.

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