In this video, Loraine Lester, VP of Product and Underwriting Management at Farmers of Salem (a mutual insurer based in Wilmington, Delaware), shares how her team uses the Finys Suite across core operations—including claims processing, billing, reporting, and business intelligence. She highlights how Design Studio empowers both business users and her development team to manage rate tables, underwriting rules, and form configurations in-house, enabling faster updates and quicker responses to shifting Mid-Atlantic market conditions. Loraine also emphasizes Finys’ strong partnership and responsiveness—helping Farmers of Salem accelerate deployments and maintain critical speed-to-market.
About Farmers of Salem
Farmers of Salem is a regional mutual insurance company specializing in insurance for home and business owners. Owned by its policyholders, not stockholders, Farmers of Salem is focused on servicing its insureds’ needs.
Using the Finys Suite Across Core Insurance Operations
Farmers of Salem relies on the Finys Suite to support claims processing, billing, reporting, and business intelligence. By centralizing these functions within a single platform, the organization reduces operational friction and gains clearer visibility into performance and trends across the business.
Empowering Business and Development Teams With Design Studio
Design Studio plays a central role at Farmers of Salem, enabling both business users and developers to manage rate tables, underwriting rules, and form configurations in-house. This flexibility allows the team to implement rate changes and product updates without lengthy delays, helping the organization respond quickly to market shifts across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.
Why Speed to Market and Partnership Matter
Loraine emphasizes the importance of speed to market in today’s rapidly changing insurance environment. With Finys, Farmers of Salem can accelerate deployments and product updates while relying on a responsive, collaborative team that supports both day-to-day needs and long-term growth initiatives.
Full Transcript:
I am Loraine Lester. I’m from Farmers of Salem. I’m the VP of Product and Underwriting Management. I oversee the product side as well as the underwriting side. I kind of sit between both worlds at our company. I oversee the Finys Suite for Farmers of Salem. Farmers of Salem is a mutual insurance company located in Wilmington, Delaware. We operate in four states in the Mid-Atlantic region: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Being a mutual, we’re owned by our policyholders, and we work through the independent agency network to sell our products. So Farmers of Salem uses the Finys Suite to process our claims. Our policyholders use it for the billing system. We use the business intelligence side of it and the reporting side of it. We use the Design Studio intensely. There is a developer on my team who uses Design Studio as well as myself.
We do all of our work there. We do all the rate changes, we do the rate tables, the underwriting rules, the form configurations, all of that is in that design studio. It’s a very powerful tool for us. I find it very helpful for us. Our prior system took time to get things out, and in the rapidly changing market that we’re in in the Mid-Atlantic region, it’s very beneficial for us. We can get our rate adjustments in, and we can respond to the market quickly. We work with our underwriting department, we work with the development department that I oversee, and we get the changes they need in a good, quick spell so that they can react to the market conditions that we’ve been experiencing in the last three, four years. Design Studio is an extremely powerful tool for Farmers of Salem. I’ve never worked with a policy admin system that has such a powerful tool for the business users to use at Farmers of Salem. We’ve had a great experience working with the Finys team, a very responsive team. I have something come up from a user or one of our agents, and I feel I could pick up the phone to anybody, and they can get an issue resolved very quickly for me. And then, as well as just our normal deploys and product integrations and improvements, we get through rather quickly with Finys, and the speed to market is essential for us.
