Trends in US Auto Insurance: An Interview with Meryl Golden

With over 20 years of property & casualty insurance management experience, Meryl Golden has a proven track record of operational excellence leading to consistent revenue and profit gains for top US insurers.

Back in the insurance industry after taking a hiatus to join a hedge fund, Meryl is at a unique vantage point to observe the latest developments in the US insurance market.

Carriers that Get to Know Their Customers Have a Huge Advantage

The recent issue of Insurance & Technology features a number of very well-written and insightful articles about customer retention and acquisition.  As Anthony O’Donnell rightly states, “carriers that get to know their customers well — by effectively leveraging collected data and by simply listening to what they say — have a huge advantage in a tough insurance market.”

The cover of the print edition features Lloyds TSB’s chief actuary Martyn Green, who says, among other things “The lifetime value model of a customer translates into massive amounts of value… From the analytical piece alone, the benefits are probably in excess of £15 [US$23.8] million a year…”

Sounds pretty compelling, doesn’t it?

You can read more about the Lloyds implementation of customer value optimization as well as other cases of leveraging customer insight on the I&T site.

Consumer Power: Sit Back and Watch the Banks Fight for Your Deposit

(Posted by David Schapiro)

MoneyAisle.com is a new phenomenon in the financial services marketplace that has been generating some buzz and media attention.  Going a step further than rate-comparison sites such as LendingTree.com or Bankrate.com, MoneyAisle turns consumers into auctioneers, as banks bid in real-time to offer customers the best rates on CD’s and savings accounts.

 

Seeing the rates offered go up in front of your very eyes is definitely a nice gimmick that can make any consumer feel like a winner, but MoneyAisle seems to really work.  I used the site’s test drive option to check the rates against the best I could find elsewhere on the Internet and in local papers, and MoneyAisle consistently offered the better rates.