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Insurance & Technology: The Blog« April 2007 | Main | June 2007 » May 22, 2007ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: New Product Configuration Software for Life/Annuities from CSCBy Anthony O'Donnell Computer Sciences Corp. unveiled Product Accelerator software, which is designed to simplify the creation of life insurance and annuity products. The software gives business experts – rather than software programmers – control of product introduction. It also includes a library of insurance product types that can enable carriers to reduce time to market, according to CSC. Product Accelerator's modeling tools allow users to combine and customize reusable components to quickly configure unique products. The software's configuration console enables collaboration among an insurer's marketing actualrial and IT departments. Posted at 04:15 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: Exstream Brings Dialogue Live to InsuranceBy Anthony O'Donnell Exstream Software introduced to the insurance industry its Dialogue Live, new software designed to manage the editing of all types of interactive documents across the enterprise, while controlling content and costs at the corporate level. Exstream says Dialogue Live is the first solution on the market that merges interactive document completion in the field with corporate document production and fulfillment. Integrated with Exstream’s enterprise document automation Dialogue software for high-volume and on-demand production of personalized customer communications, Dialogue Live enables insurers to provide customer-facing employees with the flexibility and autonomy they need to complete interactive, point-of-need, personalized documents for clients, while ensuring accuracy and costs are controlled through centralized production and fulfillment. Posted at 04:09 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: Camilion Debuts New P&C Policy Admin SystemBy Anthony O'Donnell Camilion Solutions introduced Authority Suite, which it describes as a next-generation policy administration system for the property and casualty market. Leveraging a service-oriented architecture and built on a tools-based technology platform, Authority Suite gives insurers the agility they need to overcome the challenges created by hard-coded legacy systems, according to Camilion, including the ability to quickly revise and develop new products, automate underwriting and provide online sales –all while reducing their systems maintenance costs. Posted at 04:08 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: More Than 140 Enhancements in Skywire's Documaker 11.2By Anthony O'Donnell Skywire Software announced the general availability of version 11.2 of the Documaker Suite, including Documaker Studio. Featuring more than 140 customer and market-driven enhancements, the new version began shipping this month. Features include simplified navigation, enhanced reporting capabilities, expanded conversion capabilities for AFP, Metacode and Quark, and expanded library searching and navigation. Posted at 04:06 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: Prima Solutions Launches Reference Insurance Model 5.0By Anthony O'Donnell Chicago-based Prima Solutions announced the availability of Prima IBCS 5, the latest version of the vendor’s Reference Insurance Model. The new release is packaged with a template-based generation toolset based on MIA-Generation engine from MIA-Software that supports a model driven architecture (MDA) approach. Hundreds of ACORD elements (life and P&C code lists) are incorporated into the vendor’s life and P&C model. Posted at 04:04 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: SEEC Unveils Online Catalogue of 280 SOA ComponentsBy Anthony O'Donnell SEEC, Inc. has launched its searchable online catalogue of 280 pre-built, reusable SOA components. The vendor announced the expansion of the library to include over 80 new components, bringing enhanced functionality for single customer and household view, new product configuration, claims, producer management, life quote and sales illustration, and rate/quote processes in auto, home, marine and umbrella. Posted at 04:02 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: Whitehill Technologies Announces New IStream FunctionalityBy Anthony O'Donnell Whitehill Technologies has released significant new functionality in its IStream document automation suite, which includes IStream Publisehr and IStream Document Manager, according to the vendor. The new functionality includes add-ins for Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader, letting users create complex documents in a familiar, easy-to-use, interactive environment, the vendor says. Posted at 04:00 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: MajescoMastek Introduces New Insurance Carrier SoftwareBy Anthony O'Donnell Edison-N.J.-based MajescoMastek has released software the vendor says can cut by up to 50 percent the time it takes life insurance carriers and their producers to issue policies. The vendor’s Elixir New Business/Underwriting 4.0 leverages straight-through processing to simplify and accelerate a carrier’s new business underwriting process, according to MajescoMastek. The new release features a configurable underwriting rules engine and the ability to handle applications for all product lines and from all production channels, from agents and brokers to advisers and broker/dealers. Posted at 03:58 PM | Comments ACORD/LOMA News Briefs: LOMA Launches Corporate Learning PracticeBy Anthony O'Donnell LOMA has launched its Corporate Learning Solutions Practice, which will provide member companies and their employees with new solutions to meet their professional and development needs. The solutions currently include interactive online courses, customizable learning paths and certificate programs and customized courses. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 12:01 PM | Comments CIOs Discuss Legacy Replacement and Other Key IssuesBy Nathan Conz Legacy systems migration was one of several key topics discussed at a Tuesday morning CIO panel during the 2007 ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum in Orlando. All four CIOs on the panel - Saad Ayub, CIO for Sales and Service Applications, The Hartford; Jeff Carlson, senior vice president, CIO for Domestic Life Companies, AIG; Ursuline Foley, Senior Vice President and CIO, XL Reinsurance and XL Financial Lines; and Paul Fox, CIO, Guy Carpenter & Company - said they were working to migrate off legacy systems to some degree. That reinforced some vendors' sentiments and research found in a recent report from Forrester that anticipated the IT industry will see increased investment this year, driven partially by legacy replacement. “We're committed to a conversion from legacy,” declared Guy Carpenter's Fox, who said his organization is in the midst of a long term effort to migrate seven back office legacy systems into one. Ayub added that there are some wholesale legacy replacement efforts at The Hartford, but that the IT team is also decoupling some related services so that some legacy data can be kept, allowing for more gradual migration efforts. XL's Foley said her company is in year three of a five-year initiative to standardize business processes by driving out legacy systems and building components for across the enterprise. “The long term value really is increased efficiency,” she said. One driving factor behind replacement is that legacy systems are being realized as risks to business, as workers who maintain these systems retire in growing numbers. “At some point, you have to tackle the problem,” Foley explained. “You're going to run out of the skill set.” Another key to legacy replacement is demonstrating inherent risks and hindrances to the business. For instance, off-shoring has helped make efficiency problems more apparent. “The best opportunity is to help the business understand the underlined complexity [caused by legacy systems] in everything we try to do,” AIG's Carlson said. Foley agreed, adding that a push towards “business outsourcing is beginning to expose the levels of complexity in our processes.” Several other topics were discussed by the four CIOs, who were joined by Ann M. Purr, second vice president, information management for LOMA and moderator Gregory A. Maciag, president and CEO of ACORD. The panel agreed that data security will continue to be a critical issue going forward and that there is growing preference to buy solutions, rather than build. “If your core business is insurance,” Foley explained, “you want to focus on analytics, which is where the value to the organization is.” Posted by Nathan Conz at 11:04 AM | Comments 2007 ACORD/LOMA Insurance Systems Forum Lives Up To Its PotentialBy Anthony O'Donnell Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees: this year’s ACORD/LOMA Insurance Systems Forum is the most vibrant in years. One friend who began working within the insurance systems world right after the dot-com bust expressed just how much the show has improved: “The first one I went to wasn’t a show, it was a wake,” she quipped. But this year’s event, she agreed, was the best since then, and had the feel of what these things can really be. Why is this the case? Since the dark days my friend referred to, insurance spending has gradually been rising. This year, according to a recent Forrester report, insurance budgets are expected to rise 7 percent, compared with about 5 percent in the previous year. And if insurers are spending, the vendors are likely to be more numerous and positive, the attendees are likely to be more interested them, and the tone of the whole event is likely to be more lively and pleasant. And so it is. My friend might have thought that the way this event turned out would have been too much to expect, but a news item released at the conference included something really hard to believe. The “Man Bites Dog” element appeared in a press release from IBM that reported on a survey revealing consumers’ loyalty to their insurance agents. Interesting, though hardly staggering, was the news that only 15 percent of respondents said they would consider dropping their agent to save $150 annually by buying insurance online. However, what was stunning was the finding that, “44 percent of consumers said their insurance provider is innovative as compared to other industries.” Somebody pinch me. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 11:01 AM | Comments AXA Enhances Broker Web SiteBy Anthony O'Donnell Acting on feedback from distributors and insight from research, AXA Distributors LLC has launched significant enhancements to its AXAdistributors.com Web site to provide users with greater control and security. Users of AXAdistributors.com now use a more secure authentication protocol and have access to a Message Center, which provides notices to each registered representative about his or her book of business, including an e-mail record of all client-related transactions; a Staff Access Level mechanism allows partner firms to determine the types of information that individual representatives may view, including client account information, policy details and underwriting details; and an E-Mail Subscriptions mechanism offers reps the ability to opt in to receive notices about product updates, money manager changes and other distributor-relevant information from AXA. Concerns on the part of AXA and its partner firms about the security of brokers’ ID and password led to the development of a re-authentication protocol designed to maximize security with the least impact on ease-of-use, according to Jeff Coomes, VP of Web content strategy, AXA Distributors (New York, a member company of Paris-based AXA Financial, $795 billion in assets under management). “There’s a mandatory requirement internally on any application that users reset their passwords every 90 days, and the thinking here was that we should do the same thing with our external users,” Coomes says. “However, external users weren’t too keen on the idea.” Coomes explains that a broker might work with about 10 other firms’ Web sites, none of which are likely to require them to periodically reset their passwords. In order to minimize brokers’ inconvenience, AXA implemented a protocol that prompts brokers to select a secret question, the answer to which is recorded and combined with other known information about the broker. “Now, every 90 days when [the broker] logs on and successfully enters ID and password, we ask for Social Security number and date of birth and then ask her to answer her secret question,” Coomes explains. “If she does these three things successfully, she is re-authenticated and we are happy.” In response to specific requests from distribution partners, AXA developed another authentication protocol that lets brokers authorize staff members to see certain kinds of information. “In the past the only way [a broker] could give her number-one assistant access to the Web site was for her to share her ID and password,” Coomes says. The protocol provides two tiers of access, which distributor users can use on an opt-in basis to give them greater control over what they share with their staff. User feedback and research drove AXA Distributors implementation of E-Mail Subscriptions, which responds to brokers’ preference to have relevant information pushed to them rather than their having to speculatively log on to the Web site in case something important might be posted. Since the site enhancements were rolled out in early spring, adoption rates confirm the e-mail functionality’s utility to brokers, Coomes believes. “We pushed our first e-mail out two weeks after we launched the new functionality, and 80 percent of the e-mails sent were opened,” he reports. “Of those that were opened, about 90 percent led the user to go to the Web site and get the information referred to in the e-mail.” The AXA Distributor site’s Message Center tracks users’ business by posting summaries of all financial transactions and a majority of non-financial transactions that occur in the broker’s book of business. If, for example, a fund transfer is made on a given account, an alert about that transfer will appear at the Message Center location on the site. “The broker can click on a link that takes her to a summary of the transfer,” Coomes says. “The broker can also opt in for alerts on client-initiated transactions.” Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 10:23 AM | Comments May 21, 2007Insurers Outline Best Practices for ACORD Standards ImplementationsBy Kathy Burger Acknowledging that "implementation is an important part of standard setting," ACORD president and CEO Greg Maciag kicked off the 2007 ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum at the annual ACORD Awards Luncheon, which recognizes excellence in ACORD standards implementation. Forty-four organizations received awards at this year's event. The program featured a panel discussion among past award winners, who provided updates on ACORD standards implementations at their organizations, including "lessons learned" and advice for other companies embarking on that path. Joan Falcetta, AVP, MetLife, reported on the progress of the company's Service Request Director, an integration hub that was launched in 2000 as part of "a directive to transform how we deliver systems" at MetLife. The integration hub "provides shared services internally and externally," Falcetta reported. "It allows us to standardize on many levels, including business rules." ACORD standards have been critical to the hub's success, Falcetta added. "ACORD helps us in speaking a common language in integration work it reduces complexity; and it has helped us create common interfaces and common logic." One of the most important lessons that has been learned at Aon Re as it has pursued standards initiatives is "Don't underestimate the testing process," reported Tom Neff, director, industry standards, Aon Re. He also emphasized the importance of heeding the fact that standards implementation is "not an IT project, but an IT and business project. Standards don't happen on their own. It's a volunteer army." Concurring, Thomas Krapf, VP, Reinsurance Information Management, Swiss Re, noted, "Industry standards can significantly contribute to productive information exchange with our business partners. The biggest challenge is making sure standards are implemented in critical mass." Krapf elaborated that "it's essential to start on a smaller scale, but always have critical mass in mind – who you want to target, and what you want to achieve." Standards initiatives are not "just about data," he emphasized. It's important to have a "long-term strategy perspective – how does it fit into a company's strategy and overall operational excellence?" According to Gary Plotkin, VP and CTO, e-business and technology, The Hartford, when it comes to ACORD standards, "it's not if, but how." The Hartford is using ACORD standards "across the board," in applications that support four main constituents: agents, third parties/aggregators; vendors; and, "most important, ACORD standards allow The Hartford to interact with itself [across lines of business] – it makes it easier to share data." Among the key benefits have been improvements in compliance-related actions, Plotkin reported. "The use of common standards allows our auditors to do a better job of seeing if we're managing to the [regulatory] standards to which we are held," both internally and externally, Plotkin said. Clem Booth, member of the management board of Alliance, and current chair of the ACORD Board of Directors declared a personal "passion for standards," emphasizing that "standards will be the difference between operating in an industry that has a future and one that doesn’t. We're in this together to make this industry what it's capable of being." Posted by Kathy Burger at 11:10 PM | Comments May 09, 2007Making a Difference: Joseph Beneducci, Fireman's Fund
Posted by Vitali Zhulkovsky at 02:05 AM | Comments Eyes on the (Customer) Prize: Thomas Watjen, UnumProvident
Posted by Vitali Zhulkovsky at 02:05 AM | Comments Technology-Driven Destiny: Ned Hamil, Life of the South
Posted by Vitali Zhulkovsky at 02:04 AM | Comments Keeping It Real: Kent Clapp, Medical Mutual of Ohio
Posted by Vitali Zhulkovsky at 02:04 AM | Comments Innovation Catalyst: Rod Fox, Praetorian Financial Group
Posted by Vitali Zhulkovsky at 01:54 AM | Comments May 08, 2007Nominate the Elite 8!The appearance of I&T’s annual Tech-Savvy issue means that the Elite 8 issue is just around the corner. In order to bring that issue to life, we appeal to our friends in the industry, be they technology professionals, business unit leaders, vendors, consultants or analysts, to nominate the senior insurance carrier technology executives they believe stand head and shoulders above the rest. The 2007 Elite 8 honorees will be recognized at the 2007 Insurance & Technology Executive Summit, Nov. 4-7, The Phoenician Resort, Scottsdale, Ariz. To submit a nomination (deadline: June 15), please contact Anthony O’Donnell: aodonnell@cmp.com, 503-465-0359. Nominations should include name, title, company and a list of accomplishments and qualities that make your nominee a suitable candidate for the Elite 8. We recommend that nominations be from 400 to 600 words. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 03:19 PM | Comments Editor's Note: Tech-Savvy CEOs PreviewOnce a year Insurance & Technology turns its editorial focus away from the doings of representative peers of our senior technology executive readership to the business leadership that gives them context and scope for their efforts. We profile five insurance CEOs deemed to be “Tech-Savvy,” as demonstrated by their understanding of and commitment to information technology as a means of competitive distinction and a prerequisite of operational excellence. I&T’s annual July issue dedicated to the Tech-Savvy CEOs of 2007 will soon be on the street, but in the meantime we offer our readers of Insurance & Technology News a sneak peek at the five CEOs profiled in print. Today’s edition includes not only exclusive stories beyond our print content, but also audio podcasts featuring I&T’s editors talking with this year’s Tech-Savvy CEOs about the role of technology in their businesses and their careers. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 03:08 PM | Comments Tech-Savvy CEOs 2007: A Personal ViewBy Anthony O'Donnell In the vein of author Steven Covey’s work, there are no doubt common characteristics of highly successful insurance CEOs—and even Tech-Savvy CEOs, as we suggest elsewhere. However, there is no template for technology-astute insurance leadership. This year’s crop of I&T Tech-Savvy CEOs come from widely varying backgrounds, geographies and even generations and have learned valuable lessons from widely diverging experiences. Perhaps something can be gained by a more personal look at this year’s CEOs, if only amusement or some basic view into the compatibility of various personalities and success. Something, after all, is said by what a person dedicates himself to, endorses or honors, and as the great literary figure Samuel Johnson once observed, “no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.” Unum Group CEO Tom Watjen takes pleasure in films, such as “Invincible,” the Mark Wahlberg “male weepie” about a bartender who eventually made it to the Philadelphia Eagles as a special teams player, which was the last movie Watjens watched on his iPod. “I’m always a sucker for those inspirational movies,” he admits. The entertainment device was an outgrowth of Watjen’s affinity for mobile productivity devices, which help him stay connected to work concerns during his frequent travel. “I got the higher-capacity iPod over the holidays, and have downloaded four or five movies, and actually a book or two, as well,” he reports. Joe Beneducci, CEO of Fireman’s Fund shares Watjen’s affinity, although to such an extent that he characterizes himself as a gadget junkie. “Whatever the new technology, I have a tendency to be interested—which drives my wife nuts,” he confides. “We have more useless electronic gadgets, whether music or video related, we have plenty of that junk lying around.” However, the main focus of Beneducci’s downtime is his wife and their four children. “My free time is their free time,” he says. “I try to stay disciplined about their activities and make sure I’m a good husband and a good dad.” During business travel Beneducci indulges a passion for reading both business and general material and has managed to work in biographical works on Alexander the Great and the Founding Fathers. If Life of the South CEO Ned Hamil had some more time, he would like to do some writing. He is interested in both more broadly creative themes as well as management topics and, in fact, is pondering completing the unfinished manuscript of work on management authored by a deceased friend. Like many executives, Hamil likes to golf, but he takes special pleasure in traveling with his children and grandchildren. “I continue to tell people that probably the greatest reward in life is your relationship with your adult children,” he shares. “You have to believe you at least did something right along the way.” These mellow pleasures contrast with the tense uncertainty of the time Hamil spent as an infantry officer as part of a NATO strike force in Europe during the Cold War. Alert to the scenario of a Soviet invasion, Hamil and his comrades were oriented eastward, “looking into the Fulda Gap to see all the tanks flowing down,” he recalls. Rod Fox, CEO, If he hadn’t been an insurance executive—or a Navy SEAL—Fox says he might have liked to be a football coach. He currently coaches both football and lacrosse, partly as an expression of his devotion to his four children (two boys, two girls). He also continues to play lacrosse at a club level. Upon taking the reins as Praetorian’s CEO, Fox combined his interest in leadership, physical fitness and the SEALs in a corporate retreat for his colleagues run by SEALs in a rural area outside of Dallas. “You wake up in the morning and you work out,” Fox explains. “Then we have a business meeting and then you work out again; there’s something genuinely strenuous two or three times a day over three days.” Despite this grueling regime, combined with temperatures in excess of 90 degrees, Praetorian CIO Mike Anselmo swears the retreat was “a ball.” His boss is proud to emphasize a level of activity that is not meant to be confused with namby-pamby, feel-good corporate retreat activities that have the appearance of outdoorsiness but not the true grit, but says that the effort is rewarding. “It really brings the group together, away from the day-to-day corporate nonsense,” Fox asserts. “I believe it’s my job to make people better and realize the potential.” In dedicating to helping his colleagues bring out the best in themselves, Fox says he applies the SEALs’ philosophy that “everybody is ten times better than they think they are." Editor's Note: Kathy Burger contributed to this article. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 02:32 PM | Comments Profiting From Technologyby Nathan Conz There's an old military strategy known as “pivot and hammer.” The pivot is a defensive position that takes less energy to defend. The hammer, on the other hand, is an attacking position. There's more opportunity for gain here, but more energy needs to be expended to support it. When it comes to technology, insurance companies traditionally have focused on the pivot. Thinking about IT has been of a more defensive sort, dedicated to minimizing cost and minimizing the impact of the IT budget on a company's bottom line. Today the more competitive insurance carriers have begun a more aggressive use of technology in support of competitive differentiation. A few have gone so far as to make IT a profitable enterprise unto itself, turning IT cost centers into IT profit centers by leveraging internal technological resources as external technology vendors. Included in that list are two of I&T's 2007 Tech Savvy CEOs: Life of the South's Ned Hamil and Medical Mutual of Ohio's Kent Clapp. Hamil, himself a former Cold War era infantry officer, uses the pivot and hammer terms to describe LOTS' two primary sources of revenue. Right now, LOTS derives its income 50-50 between the risk (such as payment protection) and fee (such as database marketing solutions) sides of its business. The company will continue to grow those more traditional lines of business, Hamil says, which are very reliable in terms of revenue. Still those revenue streams are not “target rich.” Growth in the area is finite, he says. The hammer is a different story. For LOTS, the term refers to fee-based business, mostly via LOTSolutions, a wholly owned Life of the South subsidiary that acts as a sort of technology vendor and services provider. Hamil says Life of the South's goal is to derive a great majority of its income from LOTSolutions. “The margins are greater, and you can leverage technology there. The IT leadership of our systems will be the hammer, or our offensive instrument, that we will use to drive our company's revenue for the future,” he says. At Medical Mutual of Ohio, CEO Kent Clapp doesn't use the same military terminology to describe Antares Management Solutions, a company he helped found in 1997. Nevertheless, the idea behind Antares remains similar. “We had a substantial technology capacity and it opened up new revenue streams in that we do business for other companies,” Clapp says. A decade after its founding, Antares now has 650 employees and generates approximately $282.5 million in revenue. Most of that revenue comes from business and technical outsourcing, third-party administration and network access services. Clapp says spinning-off Medical Mutual of Ohio's data processing shop has improved IT service, internally as well as externally. “They've learned to treat us, and their other customers, like customers. Their whole overall service levels have improved dramatically. Not that they were bad before, but I think it became state of the art,” Clapp says. According to its Web site, LOTSolutions manages more than $100 million annually in monthly billed fees. At any one time, Hamil says, the company may handle processing for as many as 15 to 18 insurance companies while also handling third-party business for many large U.S. financial institutions on behalf of “a very large insurer” in a database marketing environment. “If we had stayed internalized, just serving the internal needs of our own company, I don't think we would have ever developed the breadth of understanding that we now have of the needs of multiple companies,” Hamil says. “If we had remained attentive only to our own companies, we certainly would not have developed a reputation in the industry as a premier third-party administration.” Posted by Nathan Conz at 01:27 PM | Comments Aligned for SuccessBy Anthony O'Donnell Just as lack of understanding between business and IT is one of the great predictors of failure in technology investment, one of the distinguishing features of companies that effectively invest in technology is tight alignment between the two camps. That insight is broadly appreciated in the industry today but like so many things, achieving business/IT alignment is easier said than done. It is far more likely to be achieved, however, when driven from the top, as exemplified by both the technology philosophy and the actual performance of Insurance & Technology’s Tech-Savvy CEOs of 2007. “Where I’ve seen failures is where when senior business executives want technology to support their business but don’t adequately inform the CIO about where they are going as a company and what they are trying to do strategically,” relates Rod Fox, CEO of Praetorian Financial Group. Fox’s approach is to insist on transparency about the strategy of the business and “immersion” of Praetorian CIO Michael Anselmo in the affairs of the business. “It’s not a matter of, ‘Mike, come up for an hour on Tuesdays and we’ll talk,’” Fox explains. “Rather it’s, ‘Mike, you are a part of the group running this business so you need to see everything: You need to see all the numbers, you need to meet the producers, you need to be in the field and see what they’re doing, and you need to know how they are interfacing with their end-customers.” Fireman’s Fund CEO Joe Beneducci stresses personal interaction with technology executives at various levels in order to maximize what might be achieved through business/IT collaboration. “My tendency is to push the limits within our team toward what we can accomplish with different technology,” he says. “At the same time I try to make sure they are in a comfortable environment where they can say, 'Joe, it's a great idea but, honestly, it's not going to fly, and here are the reasons...” For Beneducci, business/IT alignment is not merely about business leaders understanding technology better, it’s about mutual respect between business and IT executives. “The industry is littered with examples where one side, whether the business leaders or the technologists, haven’t respected the other,” he observes. “For every one of those, you can find a disaster of a project that has been left behind.” While different executives have their respective spheres of responsibility at Fireman’s Fund as in any other company, Beneducci drives a strong sense of common purpose between business and technology. “At Fireman’s Fund we do not consider either technology or business a separate team; there is one team and both groups are vital to ensuring that we can deliver the appropriate solution.” Life of the South CEO Ned Hamil similarly calls attention to the integration of IT within his company’s strategic leadership. “Our IT is not compartmentalized, nor is it an entity unto itself,” he remarks. Because the company started small and IT was essential to its growth both as a carrier and a third-party administrator, Hamil says, “all of our programming staff, our operators and subsequently our business unit leaders closely integrated into the whole business process.” Adds Hamil: “I can’t overemphasize how important it is to drive quality IT interaction with business unit leaders, as opposed to someone selling a marketing idea and flopping it down in front of the IT folks and saying, ‘I told them we could do this; we need it by Monday.’” That interaction is at a premium in a company that sells its services to other carriers, Hamil suggests. Because his business and IT professionals work closely together, he explains, it allows the organization to “put a very cohesive face on our company when we go back to the client, so he doesn’t see a dysfunctional or fractured response. He gets very cohesive response and a very professional introduction to our company.” Kent Clapp of Medical Mutual of Ohio emphasizes the importance of communication skills on the part of technology professionals to bring the benefits of technology to business users. “We spend a lot of time making sure our [IT department] and users of systems have great communication and work very well together,” he notes. At the same time he stresses the need for all executives to be alert to the potential of technology to improve the business. “It’s all management’s responsibility to look for ways to improve the company,” he says. “It’s everybody’s job—including mine — to make sure that we have top-notch business processes that give us a strategic advantage in the marketplace.” Business/IT partnership is not something that Thomas R. Watjen, president and CEO of Unum Group, only gives lip service to; the concept is part of the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based benefits providers’ corporate DNA. “We are very, very firm believers that using technology smartly does create substantial competitive advantage for us,” he says. “The way we’ve set up our process here works very well for us, where it starts with the business people in concert with the technology teams – thinking through what we’re trying to do from a business point of view, and using the technology to support that business process.” While Watjen is a firm believer in these principles, he gives the credit for institutionalizing the alignment to CIO Bob Best, acknowledging, “That’s something that has been drummed into my head by Bob Best and his team.” The bottom line, Watjen says, is that “Any technology discussion starts with a business purpose. Bob has actively engaged his business partners around the company in a dialogue, which starts with what we are trying to achieve business-wise. Then we use technology as a piece of that enabler. So, under his leadership, it’s always been done the way we’ve done business here.” Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 12:46 PM | Comments
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Anthony O'Donnell, senior editor of Insurance & Technology, chats with Joseph Beneducci, one of I&T's 2007 Tech-Savvy CEOs, about how technology innovation at property/casualty carrier is enabling creation of products and services that answer the unique demands of customers and enable competitive differentiation.
Kathy Burger, editorial director of Insurance & Technology, speaks with Thomas R. Watjen, one of I&T's 2007 Tech-Savvy CEOs, about the ways technology plays a direct role in helping employee benefits provider Unum Group deal with change and gain competitive advantage and do things differently to serve employer customers.
Anthony O'Donnell, senior editor of Insurance & Technology, hears from Life of the South Corp.'s Ned Hamil, one of I&T's 2007 Tech-Savvy CEOs, about the challenges of creating a technology-driven life insurance company, including an organizational transformation that involved systems conversions, consolidating operations, and creation of a thriving TPA business.
Nathan Conz, associate editor of Insurance & Technology, talks with Kent W. Klapp, one of I&T's 2007 Tech-Savvy CEOs, about how Medical Mutual of Ohio has cultivated technology initiatives that have expanded the business and enabled efficient IT spending and operations, including streamlining claims and creating a for-profit BPO company.
Anthony O'Donnell, senior editor of Insurance & Technology, speaks with Praetorian Financial Group's Rod Fox, one of I&T's 2007 Tech-Savvy CEOs, about Fox's commitment to transform the carrier's paper-based legacy environment and invest in leading-edge technology to provide maximum accessibility to internal users and ease of use to distributors.
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