Insure Think

Opening up the data pipeline means new opportunities for insurers.

Against the ebb and flow of a society becoming fully dependent on technology for their physical and social needs, insurers are driven to keep up.

Insurers at the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation’s Women in Insurance meeting describe a unique defining moment that lead them to realize and act on their professional passion.

Finding the right data and matching it to the right decisions is a fundamental necessity, and thinking three decisions ahead will set you and your company apart.

Lately, the trend has been toward fast-and-furious delivery of solutions. Is there a downside?

A recent survey finds that more than 33 percent of employees either are actively looking for a new position or are keeping their options open.

Is the disaggregation of insurance products inevitable?

Sensors and devices are creating new approaches to premium billing.

A recent report identifies what it takes to make the transition to digital.

Sam Medina discusses how a new era of competition has driven Human Resources departments into a challenging position, where acquiring talented people is vital to achieve organizational advantage. Help can be found with transformational thinking and the creative use of technology.

Developers must understand the business language and directly engage the business side.

Google unveils prototype; simple vehicles will lack steering wheels.

PolicyWriter, by Adaptik Corp., is like no other P&C policy administration solution on the market – and we’re happy to prove it. Today’s Adaptik Blog entry highlights the software’s unique prototyping model. Want to read more about what makes PolicyWriter different? Click here.

Among the measures that insurers are turning to, the most prevalent are litigation management programs and claim analytics.

As analytics programs become increasingly prevalent and important in insurance organizations, putting the right people with the right skills on the project is crucial.

Analytics and predictive models are spreading across the enterprise.

While updating its online quoting tool, the insurer used multiple layers of measurement to understand how people were interacting with its website.

The insurance business is different from web properties, but they are providing lessons in rapid-fire innovation.

Sam Medina brainstorms on how the Legal, Compliance and Enterprise Risk Management department in an insurance company can tie its transformation efforts to the services it provides throughout the enterprise.

If the insurance industry is seen as the fusion of human and financial capital, then the willingness to embrace data analytics is strikingly uneven.

Five notes on how to successfully accomplish a major migration from one of the industry's biggest legacy migration projects.

Cisco report says companies need to do more to secure online experiences.

Insurers must recognize that data credibility is yet another dimension of data quality and take steps to address it.

Sam Medina discusses the challenges and best practices that insurers face when transforming the Sourcing and Procurement Services area.

Preparedness is the only weapon against increasingly sophisticated security challenges.

Innovation is a never-ending process.

Insurers are on the front lines of the cyber risk fight and can help clients discover and leverage best practices across industries.

Agents shouldn’t compete against their carriers for sales but we work with them for the benefit of their mutual clients.

The data is in: cloud is starting to make a dent in enterprise competitiveness.

There's a lot of interest in creating CDO positions, but what will be their main areas of responsibility?

Sam Medina points out the differences between updating the Finance & Accounting organization functions and truly modernizing and transforming F&A across all functions and geographies.

Having driven nearly 700,000 autonomous miles, Google’s self-driving car now is taking on the hazards of city driving.

Event data recorders are now in 91 percent of all vehicles, but unlike telematics devices, they record data without owners' consent.

AXA and other insurers have an opportunity to increase their value to their customers in the years to come.

Analytics solutions are intended not only to support a set of predefined reports, extracts and queries, but also should present a coherent view of information for analysis.

Organizations should seek to innovate by combining the best from inside and outside the organization.

Insurers know that growth in revenues, profits and market share is dependent on their ability to attract and retain customers. In a highly competitive arena this means taking customers from competitors in the mature markets, and getting on top of the hill first in the emerging markets. They know that consumers are more informed, have access to more powerful devices, are more connected and can make formal and informal comparisons of products and services. They are therefore more demanding than consumers of the past. Insurers also know that customers will pay for value. Leading global insurers know how to create differentiating, lifetime value-adding propositions. In most cases, what separates the leaders from the rest of insurers is that the leaders have already shifted from being inwardly-focused to being customer-focused. They have engaged in some form of transformational thinking. (For a good definition of transformational thinking vs. legacy thinking, see my first blog.)

Here's what could have kept the initial, disastrous launch of the Affordable Care Act portal from being so disastrous.

PolicyWriter, by Adaptik Corp., is like no other P&C policy administration solution on the market – and we’re happy to prove it. Today’s Adaptik Blog entry highlights the software’s unique upgrade methodology. Want to read more about what makes PolicyWriter different? Click here.

The industry has a long way to go, with many obstacles to digitization. But the potential payoffs make it worth the work.

How information is presented to business users directly impacts how easily and efficiently they can answer their analytical questions.

All the great ideas already have been taken, right?

P&C insurers face profitability pressures that rate hikes alone likely will not relieve.

The power partnership has the potential to transform and redefine AXA's customer experience, customer engagement, digital presence and growth potential to levels not yet seen in insurance.

Cloud vendors aren’t being challenged enough at the start of engagements.

From the portal rollout chaos to confusion and politicking, insurance CIOs can draw some important lessons from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ tenure.

Insurance claims processing is still categorized by some insurers as “if it’s not broken don’t fix it.” Some have taken steps to make incremental changes to their existing claims processes and systems by applying Lean process methods, and introducing data mining and predictive analytics. Although for the most part the results have been positive, these small enhancements led to small benefits.

Today’s leading P&C carriers deal with huge numbers of policies, online transactions and batch transactions – and the volume is always growing. That means a legacy policy administration system that works today might not be adequate tomorrow. High-performance, scalable policy admin solutions are no longer “nice to have.” They’re absolutely essential – for every P&C carrier, everywhere.

The bug is believed to affect security of more than 50 percent of the Internet.

A survey finds that mobile devices may soon dominate computing in financial services organizations.

Change in insurance is slow, but the race toward modernization has begun.

Transformational thinking isn’t just about ‘intelligent thoughts’. It is about converting transformational concepts into practical steps that will accomplish real enterprise transformations. (For a good definition of transformational thinking vs. legacy thinking, see my first blog.) This week we focus on how insurance marketing efforts have to transform to add value.