HARTFORD, Conn., April 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Universal Shield Insurance Group (USIG), a multi-line admitted and excess and surplus commercial lines insurance carrier, today announced the launch of its initial lines of business on OSPolicy, a fully-owned producer portal and policy administration platform built by Combined Ratio Solutions (CRS).

Universal Connect, USIG's proprietary program, is powering a full transition away from legacy, vendor-controlled technology with commercial property and general liability already live and additional product lines in active rollout. USIG has already converted all policy data for its property and liability lines and shut off its prior system for those products entirely. The remaining lines will follow by mid-2026 at which point USIG will owe nothing to any producer portal or policy management vendor for the right to run its own business.

“Given the challenges with other platforms in the past, we wanted to have complete ownership and control of our own system,” said John Lucker, executive vice president, chief strategy officer, at USIG. “Selecting CRS’ OSPolicy platform as the foundation for Universal Connect provided a solution where we can implement custom innovations without sharing capabilities or battling competing development priorities with other companies. It’s the difference between owning your home and renting it. When you own it, you renovate when you want, how you want.”

OSPolicy isn’t a blank page. CRS delivers a platform built out with the core infrastructure, data schema, and system architecture in place, so clients aren’t paying for years of foundational development before writing a single policy. USIG configured, customized, and extended OSPolicy to match the precise requirements of its commercial insurance products.

Once fully transitioned, USIG will independently expand into new states, launch new product lines, continue integrating third-party data services, and expand its systems’ functionality. The company also expects to eliminate the manual policy assembly work currently required of its operations team through OSPolicy’s issuance capabilities, freeing staff to focus on work that actually moves the business forward.

“The insurance industry has been renting its own technology for decades and calling it a solution,” said Ben Steele, president at CRS. “ We built OSPolicy because we thought that was absurd. Your system should be yours, not a shared product you’re licensing from someone whose business model depends on your growth making them richer. USIG gets it. They’re not the kind of company that accepts ‘that’s just how it works’ as an answer, and frankly, neither are we.”

For more information about this press release or Combined Ratio Solutions, contact us at [email protected].

About Universal Shield Insurance Group

Universal Shield Insurance Group (USIG) is an insurance holding company with admitted (Universal Fire & Casualty Insurance Company or UFCIC) and surplus lines (Shield Indemnity) carriers. USIG’s carriers are rated “A-“ (Excellent) by A.M. Best and “A” (Exceptional) by Demotech. UFCIC is on the U.S. Treasury list of acceptable sureties writing federal bonds up to $1,000,000. USIG is a profitable hybrid insurer/insurtech enterprise that utilizes technology, innovative processes, advanced analytics, and extensive industry experience to produce consistently profitable underwriting results while providing value to selected agents and their clients. In addition to USIG’s historically profitable surety operations and surplus lines capabilities, USIG provides admitted insurance solutions for well run small businesses that are primarily written in the surplus lines market. For qualifying risks USIG provides admitted policy forms including a BOP at competitive rates. While USIG continues to provide and build E&S capabilities, USIG believes insureds, and their agents, gain value in the protections and ease of doing business offered in the admitted market. Learn more at universalshield.com.

About Combined Ratio Solutions

Combined Ratio Solutions (CRS) is the developer of OSPolicy, a policy administration platform built for insurance carriers and MGAs who are done letting vendors own their technology. OSPolicy is delivered with no license fee and no percentage-of-premium pricing — just a fully custom-built system that belongs entirely to the client, along with every innovation they build on top of it. Learn more at combinedratio.com.

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[email protected]

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Source: Combined Ratio