Insurance Networking News - November/December 2009

based information processing requires a large staff to organize, file, retrieve, read and re-format/reproduce that information. Digital data eliminates much of this need. The first wave of Internet adoption by insurers produced many empty cubicles in new business groups as applications arrived electronically, and were routed straight into underwriter workflows.

Assumption No. 5: The ability to discern the patterns in large masses of data requires years of specialized training. While this is still true, the analytical tools now available change the nature of this kind of analysis. Insurers should take advantage of these tools as force multipliers of their most insightful analysts, and also to explore the opportunities of looking at risk factors that they may not have previously considered.

Insurer operating models were not carved on stone tablets. They were developed in response to the limits of the available information technology at the time.

Insurers should periodically ask themselves not just how they can do their current tasks better, faster and cheaper, but why they do them at all, and whether those reasons are still valid given the current state of information technology. They may well be, but not asking the questions ensures that insurers will miss opportunities to change the game in their favor. INN

Matthew Josefowicz is director of the insurance practice at Novarica, New York. He can be reached at mj@novarica.com.

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