John Worden
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
AQS, Inc.

John, welcome. Describe for us the challenges for insurers.

Insurance carriers are facing real competitive pressures to better service their distribution channels, to provide reduced time-to-market products, to leverage or obsolesce costly legacy systems, and to provide real information to the business decision makers. The expectation is that IT can deliver solutions to address all of these issues. The biggest roadblock will be an organization’s ability to effectively manage its data. This data, whether it be policy data, customer data, agent data, product data, etc., resides in multiple systems, may be inconsistent, is being managed by a variety of users, and is potentially unreliable. Each system has and needs a different view of this data. The challenge is to make it available in a way that is meaningful for all.

Next steps?

Getting senior management to understand the intrinsic business value of the organization’s data and then to invest in the tools and key individuals needed to deploy data management to the enterprise. Organizations need to understand that both business and IT are equal partners in creating and maintaining a data management strategy and that this strategy needs to be developed in parallel with the enterprise architecture.

A good data integration strategy?

Data integration starts with a true understanding of the data involved and a metadata management system that describes that data; a master data management system that focuses on managing reference data; and an architecture that supports an effective delivery framework. With those systems forming the foundation, the data integration strategy needs to be built with a service-oriented architecture. SOA-based systems that are standards-based and utilize XML Web services to expose and consume data provide data integration capabilities that are platform agnostic. By following an SOA-based architecture, the managed data can be exposed as a set of loosely coupled, autonomous services that are responsible for passing data via XML messages.

Straight-through processing?

Create a comprehensive data management strategy that aligns the needs of the business, adds true value to the organization, and creates the foundation for the successful implementation of a SOA.

Alex Aminian
President & CEO
DAVID Corp.

Alex, thanks for joining us. Stumbling blocks for insurers?

Paramount for insurers was aquiring the right tools to obtain data transparency among disparate data sources containing customer information. Increased reliance on the Internet forced a reassessment of legacy systems and the time and resources needed to properly process data across applications and enterprises. Insurers have had to contend with the lack of a collaborative environment, which caused inefficiencies in the various steps from login to reporting; the lack of well-defined business rules and/or workflow; and the need to establish on-demand access to customer data for reporting and analytic purposes from anywhere and anytime.

Next steps for insurers?

Empower end-users with tools and software solutions designed to effortlessly help run their business rather than forcing them to modify internal workflows to accommodate software limitations. This goal can be achieved by implementing a Business Process Management solution along with a customizable work flow and a Business Rules Engine to facilitate the movement of data and straight-through processing, as well as providing a self-service portal to have on-demand role-based access to real-time risk data and business intelligence.

A good data integration strategy?

Simply transparent, timely, reliable, and effortless. A good data integration strategy provides a timely and trustworthy mechanism to move the data from a variety of sources while providing a single view for reporting and analysis of the data.

Sum up your advice to insurers.

Empower the end-user to be able to customize their solution and adapt it to their constantly changing business and regulatory requirements. The fastest yet most effective path to achieve this goal is through implementing appropriate technology and robust Business Process Management and Business Rules Engine platforms.