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In many ways, insurance companies have become embroiled in a sticky Catch-22 regarding their ability to use, manage and deploy information technology internally.The catch: Carriers have a good shot at becoming proficient at internally managing IT if they devote only the necessary resources and apply the proper approach to making it happen. But they won't commit to either of these until they are certain that success is in the offing.

While in flight to Boston on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 and hearing news of the horrific attacks in progress, Hemant Shah's first concern was the fate of the business associates he met with the previous day at the World Trade Center.But as the founder of Newark, Calif.-based Risk Management Solutions (RMS), he must have realized the seismic change the field he helped pioneer-catastrophe modeling-would soon experience.

As the property/casualty industry continues to get hammered by financial losses stemming from rising claims costs and deteriorating margins, Allstate Corp. is realizing that the best growth opportunity lies in the financial services arm, whose main products are life insurance and investment products."The financial industry is growing faster as an industry, so there's more of an opportunity to grow that slice of the business," says Edward M. Liddy, chairman and chief executive officer of the Northbrook, Ill.-based company.

Before 1996, The St. Paul Cos. was a paper-pushing insurance company like any other. Unlike most of its counterparts, St. Paul took the technology plunge in the mid-1990s and has been floating with the currents of change ever since.It was in 1995 that the nearly 150-year-old commercial property/liability insurer began the mammoth task of creating a more efficient, automated means of delivering policy information to its army of independent agents.

For Royal & SunAlliance, processing auto claims went from being a royal pain to a royal gain-thanks to an outsourced solution that's firing on all cylinders.Insurers that strive hard to improve their claims processing abilities within auto insurance lines sometimes watch the entire effort come crashing down due to one crucial deficiency: poor auto repair experiences.

Before the days of integrated marketing programs, independent agents or their customer service representatives picked up the phone and called customers in the hopes of retaining the business of the agency's most profitable clients.Times have changed. Today, it's too expensive and time-consuming for an agency to hunt and peck its way through a large client list looking for its most profitable customers-then conceive ways to keep them on board. And it's too expensive for agencies to have a marketing arm or customer service representatives who do anything more than sell, sell, sell.

The Web-based design of Kemper's Compete integrated marketing program enables agents to use it from any computer. Once at the site, an agent can choose the prospecting or customer contact campaigns that support their sales objectives, including retention of their most profitable customers.A Kemper agent accesses the Compete program through the Kemper's Auto and Home's agent portal, at www.IFGwork source.com. The agent then views the profiles of the agency's customers on the screen.

The numbers are too compelling to ignore. The average salary for a call center agent in India is one-tenth that of a U.S. agent's-or roughly $300 a month. In a 500-seat operation, that amounts to $16.2 million a year in payroll savings alone.In addition, India's young, educated and highly motivated workforce, views working in a call center as a prestigious job, unlike their American counterparts who typically view it as a temporary step toward a "real" career.

Insurance companies that outsource customer care to third parties within the United States are apprehensive about people finding out customer service calls aren't handled within their own walls.As a result, these insurers typically require vendors to keep their relationships confidential, and they refuse to be interviewed.

As the needs and demands of e-business evolve, companies are faced with an emerging security threat. And it's not a new hacking technique or vulnerability in a particular technology.It's complexity-the complexity of technologies, the complexity of balancing business and security demands, and the complexity of relationships among user communities.

What is your organization's IT fitness level? Is your team out of breath on short distances? Or is it ready for long-distance hauling? Final performance depends on the workout, and if standards adoption isn't part of your IT team's fitness regimen, your team may be doomed to under-achieve, despite any obvious talent in the lineup.Standards use can be likened to gym membership: Everybody agrees that it's a good idea, but its only as good as the number of times you actually go and workout.

Over the years, financial services providers have emphasized that one key to prosperity is conducting business both faster and cheaper.But in their zeal to implement a strategy based on speed and cost-containment, many financial services providers-including insurers-watched it backfire. Rather than generating positive results, they created a series of nonintegrated applications that support separate business lines and products-a silo mentality.

Until last month, the strongest positions regarding modernization of insurance regulation have been proposals for an optional federal charter for insurance companies. But another compelling-and opposing-perspective entered the debate in August, when the Alliance of American Insurers published a report that firmly argues against federal regulation for property/casualty insurance."Optional federal chartering entails a significant risk of adverse and unexpected consequences, no matter how carefully and narrowly initial legislation is crafted," the report concludes. "The better and more prudent policy is to reject federal chartering and encourage and support further modernization of state regulation."

Michael Keller's mission is to create a collaborative IT environment, maximize ROI on technology investments and deliver value-added services.With the rapid increase in the number of companies under the Nationwide Financial Services Inc. umbrella, Michael Keller had a formidable mission in his first year: create a cohesive, collaborative IT community within Nationwide to leverage capabilities, maximize return on IT investment and deliver more value-added services.

When insurance companies explore implementation of top-of-the-line mobile computing solutions, many concede that laptop is technology no longer on their short list for consideration.Once regarded as a viable option for conducting business remotely, laptops lost ground to other hand-held options, such as Web-enabled wireless phones, two-way pagers and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA).

Despite the growth of online self-service, call centers remain the most common way for customers to interact with companies. New technologies promise ROI by focusing on the performance of the people who deliver service to the customer-call center agents.Driving customers to the Internet for self-service is an effective way for insurers to reduce the high costs of providing information and processing transactions off-line. The fact is, most customers still prefer to call and talk to a human being-the most expensive customer-service channel.

There's no question about it: A contact center is an expensive operation. Not only has the technology become more complex and costly over the past few years, but training and licensing agents-who leave at a clip of 25% to 40% annually-impact a carrier's bottom line.It's no wonder many insurers decide to farm out some or all of their customer care functions-to the tune of $1 billion per year, according to research from IDC, Framingham, Mass.

To many insurance carriers, back-end processing of small-business insurance through accurate underwriting has long been a source of frustration.On the front end, providing thorough servicing for demanding business policy owners can represent another challenge. In the middle, furnishing independent agents with automated tools to build small-business volume has seen its share of tribulations.

Technology upgrades are often characterized by cautious experimentation and taking relative baby steps-especially among insurers.National Grange Mutual Insurance Co. (also known as Main Street America Group) has certainly weathered its fair share of technology trends. Founded in 1923, the Keene, N.H.-based company has established a portfolio worth more than $500 million in premium through its network of 1,100 independent agents. The property and casualty insurer serves the East Coast from Maine to Florida.

Despite the economic slow down and the many challenges faced by the insurance industry, carriers increased their total IT budgets in 2002 by an average of 7%. On average, 35% of this spending is devoted to new projects and strategic initiatives, according to a study by Celent Communications, Boston.Many insurance companies cannot afford to not update their existing systems. In a mature and highly competitive marketplace like the U.S. insurance industry, operational efficiency and flexibility is key to profitability. To achieve these goals, insurance companies must take advantage of new technological capabilities in every step of the insurance business process or risk falling behind their competitors.