Every insurance organization likely has enlightened individuals who have new ideas on how to build new markets. And technology is paving the way to finally capture this hidden knowledge.
In a
A few years ago, rather than managing along with dictates from its New York headquarters, Chubb embarked on an effort to spark innovation among its regional and branch offices. The insurer, which underwrites risk in niche markets such as clean tech, life sciences and medical devices, realized it needed to move faster with innovations in its product offerings if it was going to keep up.
Enter IT.
As Fitzgerald reports, Chubb's IT department took the reigns of the project and built a social business platform to connect people and ideas. The social platform also is deployed to support internal innovation events, which bring together up to 10,000 people, including independent brokers and agents.
“We’ve discovered that the best ideas, or idea fragments, come from the people closest to the customer and broker, usually inversely related to title,” Gerry Myers, VP of global innovation for Chubb, is quoted as saying. “We’re finding that sales representatives or office clerks are probably in the best position to know where the pain points are of people you’re trying to sell policies to.”
Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant, blogger and frequent INN contributor specializing in information technology.
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