Insurance & Technology

Issues Archive

Face-to-Face Events:
November 7-10, 2010
Insurance & Technology's 12th Annual Executive Summit

Online Events:
March 23, 2010
Keeping Agents Focused on Customer Acquisition

April 13, 2010
The Optimized Enterprise

Insurance & Technology Blog

Integrating a Customer Value Currency across the Enterprise
March 18, 2010 @ 06:01 PM | By

By John Lee, Merkle

Part I of this two-part series on creating “Customer Lifetime Value” currency described how insurance providers can establish a company-wide “customer value currency” or valuation standard that takes into account the entire customer. Part two describes how an organization’s customer value currency can be used throughout the enterprise to improve marketing results.

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Creating a Customer Value Currency
March 18, 2010 @ 12:48 PM | By

Part I of a two-part series on creating “Customer Lifetime Value” currency.

By John Lee, Merkle

In today's market conditions, insurance sales and marketing executives are often faced with a difficult "Catch-22": How to balance continued short-term policy acquisition growth with long-term profitability, customer retention and loss ratios. While marketing is often seen as the best way to gain the advantage over the competition, the reality is that the customer most responsive to marketing messages – from acquisition - to retention - to cross-sell – is often not the customer most likely to drive the greatest profit for the provider. In fact, often the inverse is true.

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Building a Secure DR Plan: Is SOX Compliance Enough?
March 17, 2010 @ 12:52 PM | By

By Eric Burgener, InMage

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) includes a number of provisions relating to how insurance companies must manage their data. SOX legislation requires companies to establish formal processes across a number of areas and demonstrate they have the procedures in place to execute against those processes. In the area of disaster recovery, simply having a plan is sufficient to meet compliance requirements, but it may not hold up if a catastrophic event actually occurs.

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Early Insurance Industry Reaction to Sen. Dodd's Financial Reform Bill
March 16, 2010 @ 02:21 PM | By Anthony O'Donnell

If one were to summarize the reaction of insurance industry associations to Senator Chris Dodd's financial reform bill it would be: "If it aint broke, don't fix it." The bill includes provision for a Office of National Insurance (ONI) and the requirement for some large insurers, among other financial services firms, to contribute to a "resolution mechanism," involving a fund to enable the liquidation of failing financial institutions. An excerpt from an open letter published by the American Insurance Association (AIA):

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Improving the Quality of Insurance IT Applications, Part III: Improving Software Quality at AGF-Allianz
March 16, 2010 @ 09:11 AM | By

By Paul Camille Bentz, former CIO, AGF-Allianz

I started my tenure as Group CIO of AGF, the French arm of Allianz, at a time when AGF was merging with Allianz. Our IT organization was struggling to support the massive change while continuing to deliver an acceptable level of service. More than a thousand developers were working on software changes daily.

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Improving the Quality of Insurance IT Applications, Part II: The Current State of Insurance IT Applications
March 15, 2010 @ 11:39 AM | By

By Paul Camille Bentz, former CIO, AGF-Allianz

The business of insurance (property and casualty, health and life insurance) has always been IT intensive. IT plays an integral role in insurance products – in many cases it is the product. Hence, the insurance industry was one of the earliest industries to integrate IT into its business model.