New Enservio leader plans Twin Cities headquarters for insurance software firm

Brian Filip, managing director of Enservio, is leading the expansion of its Twin Cities office to serve as a headquarters for the global provider of contents software and claims services solutions in the property and casualty insurance market.

Key leadership positions will move to Eagan from Enservio's Boston offices over the next nine to 12 months, Filip said. Enservio will invest in "innovation teams" in Minneapolis as it brings in data science, product and technology roles. Enservio will continue its Boston operations.

Filip previously was vice president of technology and data science at Eagan-based Explore Information Services, which offers risk management data solutions to the property and casualty insurance industry and state and federal governments. Enservio and Explore Information Services are business units of Solera Holdings, an asset management and risk protection technology firm based in Texas.

Filip, promoted to Enservio from Explore in September, has been heading up Solera's efforts to build new property claims calculation platforms in Europe with teams in Germany and the United Kingdom. He led Soleria's acquisition in February of in4mo, a property claims solutions company based in Finland.

"I recognized that the next iteration of data analysis wasn't going to be actuarial science but was going to go down more the path of big data, data science and machine learning," Filip said. "We decided to stop hiring actuaries and start building a data science team. As I take on other responsibilities like the work in Europe and at Enservio I'm starting to bring those same data science capabilities into those businesses."

Enservio's new "Straight Through Contents" tool, which guides policyholders from reporting lost inventory through settling on payment of a claim over a smartphone, exemplifies those efforts, Filip said.

Filip, who has an MBA from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, worked at Thomson Reuters before joining Explore in 2012.

Q: How can insurance companies benefit from data science?

A: Interfaces like "Straight Through Contents" are areas that the insurance companies know they should build, but they don't necessarily have the capacity or the data and the experience to build. That's where we help to fill that niche. We're going to reduce your cost, improve your accuracy and improve the customer experience. The more technology we can provide to them that makes that customer experience a positive one, the better off they are.

Q: What are your priorities at Enservio?

A: It comes down to innovation and being able to provide those consumer-facing solutions. We're already very good at the data and the service and the back end part of this process. The goal for this year is to fully capitalize on deploying those solutions that will impact how the consumer interacts with their insurance company to make that whole experience more efficient and painless for them.

Q: What is driving the move to make Minneapolis Enservio's headquarters?

A: The impetus behind that is to start the cross-pollination of innovation. Explore already has a strong data science team here. If you're going to add some leadership in that space it makes sense to have them here so they can adopt the culture and the processes of the team that's in place. It's logical to have some of our product team sitting next to those data scientists … and to have some of our technology team sitting here.

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Lake Elmo. His e-mail is todd_nelson@mac.com.