Insurance Analytics – Turning Data into Dollars (from Deloitte)

The insurance team at Deloitte has recently published an excellent new report on insurance analytics.

I find this report enlightening because it covers all aspects that make analytics so valuable to insurance organizations.

• Data: We live in the big data era. Insurers that fail to take advantage of the data available to them to make better business decisions are essentially surrendering a huge advantage to their competitors. They are also forfeiting additional value they could provide to their customers.

• Algorithms: Traditional analytics were all about analyzing past data. Advanced analytics are all about using this data to predict future business outcome and help managers make better decisions to optimize these outcomes.

• Integration: No longer are analytics confined to the back office. Today’s competition is not only about making better decisions, but making them quickly enough to stay ahead of the field.

• Organizational culture: Making use of analytics requires managers to trust the data. This is not always easy. The data and analytics sometimes point in a direction that contradicts intuition and current business practice.

The report also does a good job explaining how seemingly small changes can make a sizeable difference in business performance. In highly competitive markets such as property and casualty insurance, these small changes often end up what separate the winners from losers.

Click here to access the report.

Insurance for a Smarter Planet: An Interview with IBM’s Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis is the general manager of IBM’s Global Insurance Industry. He is responsible for IBM business with insurance clients as well as worldwide strategy, development of skills, assets, and capabilities to better serve IBM’s Insurance clients in all parts of the world.

Q: What are some of the key trends you are seeing in the insurance industry?

 

Price Optimization in the New Age of Insurance

There is an interesting article published last week in FST – Financial Sector Technology about price optimization.

It provides great insight about price optimization in financial services and its relevance given the current financial crisis. Datamonitor’s Jonathan Steiman is an excellent analyst whose opinion I highly respect. However, in this particular case I believe Insurers should put price optimisation at a very high priority.

I hope you enjoy the article and join the discussion.

Customer Differentiation Is Needed to Insure Profitably

Here is an opinion piece of ours that was published last month in National Underwriter P&C – a weekly magazine serving the entire insurance industry.

Customer Differentiation Needed To Insure Profitably

I hope you find it interesting and would be glad to get your comments.