Insurance Evolution: Achieving Competitive Web-based Product and Service Delivery

Part IV: Planning and Deploying a Competitive Model

Opportunity: Successful deployment of the new model will result in reduced costs and improved services, and it will build on the company's future competitiveness.

The Reality: The majority of insurance companies are not positioned to deploy real-time systems from a business or technical perspective. With budget constraints, lack of a holistic strategic plan, complacency and the lack of skilled personnel, companies may be challenged to meet the expectations in a timely fashion

The convergence of consumer/agent expectations and newly embraced technologies are positioning the industry for major improvements to the product and service delivery process. The solution requires a complete and integrated company strategy. It involves business-driven re-engineering efforts, as well as sophisticated and integrated technologies and applications in support of those business functions. Insurance policies such as homeowners, personal automobile and commercial lines business owners' policies are well suited to automated underwriting and pricing rules. These lines of business also comprise the high volume transactions in the majority of companies with the most potential gain for the company and agent.

The more complex transactions and policy types will continue to require the attention of highly skilled personnel and continue to be processed in traditional ways. Business application software in support of real-time processing and automated decision-making must be purchased or developed. These applications will also be needed to allow for the higher levels of service expected by consumers. Additional efforts need to be given to the complexity of security of information in the insurance regulatory environment. Business partners are taking lead roles in the business transformation and must be aligned with the company strategy.

Regulatory bodies are active participants in defining expectations pertaining to security and use of consumer information and must also be in a partnership role to implement the new service expectations successfully. The cost of such a strategy can be quite high. But, the absence of such a strategy places the company at a tremendous marketing and "cost of doing business" disadvantage.

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