Guidewire asked insurance companies to replace the systems at the center of their business. Property and casualty insurers ran underwriting, claims and billing on old software that was hard to change. Guidewire's products let them change rules, workflows and screens without rewriting code. Its customers made those changes through a web browser. When Guidewire filed to go public in 2011, it was a ten-year-old San Mateo company selling to one of the most careful industries in the world.

Policy, Claims and Billing

Guidewire was incorporated in Delaware in 2001. Its chief executive at the IPO, Marcus Ryu, was one of its founders. The company built three main products: PolicyCenter for underwriting, ClaimCenter for claims and BillingCenter for billing. Insurers could buy them together as Guidewire InsuranceSuite. The software could run in a customer's own data center or in the cloud, and the insurer could configure it without touching the underlying code.

Thirteen Dollars in January

Guidewire priced its IPO at $13 a share in January 2012 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as GWRE. Over the next decade it moved its customers toward a hosted version of its products, called Guidewire Cloud. Mike Rosenbaum took over from Ryu as chief executive in 2019. Guidewire is still public on the NYSE, and it is still based in San Mateo, California.

Cover: Young Man Holding Umbrella Beside a Fence, Suzuki Harunobu. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for shelter under an umbrella (insurance).