Insure Think

Cloud can either divide or unite companies. When united, enterprises achieve great agility and innovation.

Either way, insurers need to ensure that they offer professionals great places to work and learn.

Good underwriting is the key to a profitable book of business for an insurer. Underwriting profitability is an important financial measure, and is flanked by other typical key performance indicators used to measure underwriting effectiveness such as the number of new policies, percentage of revenue from new policies, customers and products, underwriting speed, reduced loss ratio, and the ease of doing business.

Senior business leaders everywhere, and even boards of directors, are trying to determine the best ways to deal with big data at their organizations. Here's a look at the factors to consider when planning your big data strategy.

The relationship between agent and carrier is a leading factor in not just the success of a PAS transformation, but in the success of the business' as a whole.

The reason excellent customer experience is hard for so many insurance companies? Legacy technology infrastructure.

Insurance today offers a lesson in economics. Traditional product development (supply) is not meeting modern consumer needs (demand). The result is a loss of potential revenue. What is needed is ‘transformational thinking’. (For a definition of transformational thinking and legacy thinking, see my first blog.see my first blog.)

The general manager of usage-based insurance says predictive models are the "secret sauce" that gives the company a competitive advantage in the space.

Insurers are ready to design digital solutions that change the industry into a continuous, predictive, risk management service.

Cloud is cheap up front, but full of hidden costs. Here are eight potential "gotchas"

APIs are the new big thing for technology innovation, and they literally are everywhere.

Technological advances are generating vast new sources of data that can assist carriers with better decision-making.

Five strategies that insurers are using to guide their social media efforts.

Mobile and cloud accelerate the evolution of ECM tools.

Carriers and agents have made significant progress in improving the sales process, but there’s still a long way to go.

Examining the importance of change management in a PAS transformation.

Life and annuity carriers have made significant strides in transforming from legacy to modern policy administration systems.

Cloud may replace many on-premises functions.

We have to shed legacy thinking in order to start thinking transformatively. Legacy thinking is not just about legacy systems; it is also about processes and people. (For a good definition of legacy thinking, see last week's blog .) How you think about the roles of people inside and outside your organization can lead you toward or away from organizational transformation.

As we enter 2014, we’re ready to design solutions that change insurance from a backward-facing, financial indemnity product to a continuous, predictive, risk management service.

With big data and machine learning tools and algorithms, the possibilities are endless.

Insurance companies should look to their high-transaction cousins when it comes to mobile strategies.

Insurer and tech giant have made separate announcements that should be of interest to the insurance industry, especially those pursuing insurance telematics programs.

A safe new-year prediction is that we shall see more insurers getting into trouble, paying the price for over-expansion.

Competitive advantage comes from being able to answer any question at any time.

One out of four cloud vendors may not be around a year from now. Will your data be there?

Through its acquisition of Nest, Google soon will have access to even more personal data, positioning it to potentially enter the homeowners’ insurance market.

No matter who you are or what your role is in your organization, you should leverage the power of your thoughts. Thoughts are inception points and transformational thoughts can spark real change in your organization. The power of your thoughts can result in great ideas and can inspire and move others toward collaboration, innovation, and creating the future. It can transform your work, your organization, your company, and even an entire industry.

The best insurers will achieve competitive advantage by developing the judgment and decision-making capabilities of their knowledge workers.

Enough talk about cloud and big data analytics — insurers want to see execution.

Since last year, new skills and new thinking are more urgent than ever, even as budgets and technology needs remain static.

Insurers strongly support flood reform, but it needs to be implemented in a fashion that doesn’t destroy flood-affected communities.

By knowing where there may be gaps in coverage, you can help to mitigate or potentially eliminate future claims.

For P&C companies, cloud and analytics will define success in the year ahead, says Ernst & Young. But is that all there is?

Insurers need to think not just about how customers want to buy a product, but the total lifetime experience.

The year 2014 is expected to be something of a tipping point for established and new technologies to take hold in the insurance industry.

Changes for distributors of insurance products may be coming in 2014.

Let's face it, big data is dumb.

Tort and liability issues will flash a yellow go-slow light for driverless cars for years, but will not shut down the road altogether.

The vendor that once ruled the world opened up computing to the rest of us.

Insurers can learn from the development troubles of the recently launched HealthCare.gov.

Data centers are changing right in front of our eyes, but who's going to make those changes?

Understanding these areas of concern can help you avoid and manage the potential risks inherent to IT projects.

Marketing and IT people actually stand on common ground, looking to support customer data and interactions.

Insurers that invest in building innovation as a corporate capability will be positioned to react to disruptive threats.

Industry associations and experts had a lot to say about the FIO report, even though there wasn’t much new information in it.

Insurers have always been at the forefront of in-house training and development, but will this carry over to tech and big data skills?

Focusing on the lack of testing makes for snappy headlines. More importantly, though, it's an indication of systemic failures in the development process.

A Swiss initiative is helping to develop women leaders.

With these elements in place, your chances of delivering on the promise of innovation are significantly increased.

How technology innovations allow brokers and carriers to do business more easily and effectively.

Lessons in agile development and data security were reinforced; mobile and cloud became as commonplace as telephones.