Ray August, President, Property and Casualty Insurance Division & Michael W. Risley,  President, Life and Annuity Division, CSC Financial Services

Welcome Ray and Michael. Glad to have you both here with us from CSC. Tell us what was behind some of last year’s successes.

We all know the basic ingredients for the success of a major project: the commitment of senior management, strong project management, proven technology and a skilled staff to focus on the project from kickoff through production. One of the major reasons projects fail, however, is non-alignment between IT, the business and senior management. When all three areas align and work proactively together, companies are able to realize some major achievements, particularly in the area of achieving seamless integration. Savvy organizations realize that integration isn’t just putting front end to back end. It’s really about the total lifecycle of interfacing throughout the relationship with policyholders, producers and third parties. This “true” integration means easier and more efficient interaction with agents, CSRs or back-office employees. It also provides immediate access to useful information in an easy-to-read format — saving time and driving efficiency into processes.

“Life and annuity companies must respond to the growing demand for expanded customer and producer self- services.” – Michael W. Risley

“The critical next step for P&C carriers is to better analyze and manage data from many different sources.” – Ray August

What are some of the critical next steps?

Life and annuity companies must respond to the growing demand for expanded customer and producer self-services. Paper-based transactions make selling and servicing policies expensive and time consuming. Insurers report that up to 50 percent of paper insurance applications have errors that prevent them from being processed on first receipt. Electronic applications, on the other hand, have error rates of less than 1 percent. Demand is growing for these services as insurers see the benefit of automating as much of the process as possible — from the receipt of the request to final confirmation.

Many P&C carriers, in comparison, are ahead of life insurers in implementing customer and producer self-services. The critical next step for P&C carriers is to better analyze and manage data from many different sources. Every company has historical data, but in many cases the data cannot be easily accessed or deciphered. In the future, insurance executives are going to need dashboard reports that cover the entire business. Dashboards take reporting to the next level. They give managers a quick snapshot of the business at any given time and show where improvements are needed. Data can then be shared across the organization from agents to the back office.

Exciting advancements?

In the life and annuity industry, implementing a component-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a top priority. Enabling the integration of new applications based on modern technology such as J2EE or .NET with an insurance company’s existing application portfolio is an exciting achievement. Life insurance carriers maintain policies for decades, with some still on the books dating back to the early 20th century. Systems that support these policies can be time consuming and disruptive to replace. SOA lets insurers preserve their current investments while reaping the benefits of new technology.

SOA is also a key development in the P&C industry, allowing carriers to dramatically shorten cycle times for software enhancement. Instead of waiting 12 to 24 months to add new features to the production system, P&C carriers today are getting access to software that can be continuously upgraded and modernized. CSC has introduced the Continuous Delivery Process, which allows carriers to avoid the traditional upgrade process that forces companies to wait for the next release. Instead, software updates are distributed as soon as they become available. Insurers remain continually up to date, avoiding huge service expenses over time as well as getting business value from software enhancements much faster.

What is the one message you would leave with insurance companies?

It’s time for companies to make strategic choices to position themselves to capture the wave of opportunity ahead. This will only happen if they can bring the right products to market quickly and provide their customers with a superior sales or service experience. To be successful, insurers must embrace not only new technology but also the optimization and management of the end-to-end process — not just the pieces. If they do this, they will move from being “fast followers” to “fast learners” and compete more effectively in a crowded marketplace.