Analytics

Needham, Mass. - As the insurance industry becomes more immersed in service oriented architecture (SOA) technologies, few outside organizations are available that provide peer review, guidance and cross-industry advice. Penn National Insurance, a Harrisburg, Penn., mutual company that provides a wide range of insurance, however, seems to find such an organization. Penn is among 31 others joining the newly formed SOA Consortium since it's inception on May 1, signaling the onslaught of business organizations across vertical markets requiring SOA-related information.

The Hartford P&C Co. built a single consumer view for both its new business and its renewable policies, including a customer application that gives it instantaneous information about its customers. Its personal lines business also has been able to bring together some 30 different third-party data sources in the company and put them into one source.The Hartford's personal lines now has a single manner in which it processes motor vehicle reporting (MVR) across the entire company. The insurer built a single service that enables The Hartford to get immediate access to data across the company and work real-time with the states provided to gather MVR information. That service is now used in six different places across the firm, for everything from renewal purposes to billing purposes. Meanwhile, The Hartford's commercial lines business has made great strides in automated decisioning, improving its billing and creating new automated underwriting. The carrier's agents are now able to receive information in real time and provide quotes to commercial customers quickly.

This is the third in a series of INNovators Award Winners.

Some things change; some don't. A 2002 report from Boston-based Celent LLC, stated, at that time, within insurers' IT budgets, expenditures on internal staff consumed the lion's share, roughly 44% on average, with another 11% spent on consultants. Software licensing and support formed the next largest block, with a 20% share, followed by hardware with 15% on average. Connectivity and bandwidth consumed about 8% of budgets five years ago.What probably did not change in the five years between these findings is that CIOs' decision-making plays a big role in how these numbers come about. INN's first-ever issue in 1997 contained the article, "The New Breed of Insurance CIO," which concluded that more is being requested of the insurance company CIO than ever before. CIOs are not only being asked to have more business savvy, but also to be a communicator to senior management and an agent of technological change for the organization and its information systems.

The editorial mission statement from our 1997 inaugural issue of Insurance Networking and Data Management reflected the industry's overarching requirements: "Every issue promises you, our readers, comprehensive and credible information on the most important data access, electronic networking and electronic commerce issues that are revolutionizing the nation's insurance industry."At a time when e-commerce was dawning, IT spending on these technologies was a mandate: Carriers were charged with keeping pace in order to remain competitive.

AGENTS DEMAND REAL-TIME SERVICEIndependent insurance agencies are poised for a major service breakthrough with the proliferation of real-time transactions, says a prominent participant in the industry-wide push to double real-time transaction volume in a year.

WHETHER ON PAPER OR ONLINE, TEN YEARS LATER, THE PERSONAL TOUCH STILL MATTERS

PPS SOFTWARE SUITESkywire Software, a Frisco, Texas-based provider of software products for the insurance industry, announced the availability of a reporting tool for PPS, its policy production system for managing general agencies and wholesalers.

Over the last 20 years, the advances enabled by financial modeling are impressive. Insurers have made improvements in risk management, capital optimization, product development and other important aspects of their business with the help of financial models. The critical importance of financial models has never been more evident.Products today are increasingly complex, and the pressure to manage, measure and report risk continues to grow. As a result, models viewed as highly sophisticated just a few years ago are now inadequate to meet today's needs. However, keeping pace with these demands is becoming increasingly difficult.

How can carriers capitalize on the convergence of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business intelligence (BI)? Insurance Networking News asked Mark Gorman, strategic research advisor, insurance, and David West, research area director, insurance, for TowerGroup Inc., Needham, Mass.INN: More and more carriers are seeing the value of SOA for BI (i.e. business intelligence services). Why? What are the drivers?