Karen Furtado Joins SMA As Partner

Former CGI executive Karen Furtado has become a partner at Boston-based SMA Inc., an insurance industry analyst firm formerly known as Smallwood Maike & Associates. Furtado was most recently insurance practice director at Burlington, Mass.-based Collaborative Consulting LLC.

"Karen is known in the industry as a thought leader," comments Deb Smallwood, founder of SMA. "Her expertise provides significant benefits for our clients, both vendors and insurance companies alike, and further strengthens SMA's position as a top strategic advisory firm. We are very excited to bring her wealth of knowledge and depth of experience to our thriving practice."

Furtado has more than 25 years of technical and business experience within the insurance industry. While her specific areas of expertise include application development, complex system implementations, vendor selection processes, project management, and business process outsourcing and technical outsourcing, throughout her career she has focused on delivering high-value solutions for cores issues facing insurance carriers, according to an SMA source.

"I have always been driven by the same values held by SMA," said Furtado. "It was great to find that like me, SMA believes in strategies which result in actionable and concrete deliverables to meet definite business needs. SMA is positioned to assist both insurance companies and vendors gain clarity and focus on mission-critical decisions that are so needed in these difficult times. Our goal is to provide companies with a unique blend of management consulting deliverables that are business-driven and research-based which will impact both current and future business decisions."

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio