Sonny Rivera, President, Access CoverageCorp, A Trumbull Services Company

“Take a good look at the business processes and IT solutions in which you have invested. If your next system does not embrace change, then neither have you.”

Welcome Sonny. What separated the failures from the successes last year?

Insurance companies continue to face competitive pressures in developing distribution channels and servicing their agents. These pressures come in the form of providing real-time quoting, binding, mid-term servicing, automated pricing and underwriting. Increasing the speed-to-market also is a key driver in these competitive pressures. We have seen more success with companies that are looking for a quantum leap – not just an incremental improvement – in business process improvement, technology, and expense reduction. Leveraging the carrier’s existing assets continues to slow implementations, but the tide is changing. Carriers and vendors have gotten the message. To control TCO, embrace market changes by leveraging dynamic configurable processes and solutions.

Your advice on next steps?

I see two critical steps for 2008 and beyond. First, insurers need to continue to improve servicing their distribution channels and developing new channels. Adding value to independent agencies adds value to the carriers. Second, in order to realize long-term competitive revenue and profit potential, insurers must continue to adopt and implement business processes and technologies that are flexible and dynamic. It is imperative that companies embrace these market changes.

Exciting advancements?

The combination of some of the existing stand-alone products, combined with advances in dynamic workflow, business process management, and business rules technology will provide an interesting diversity of product integrations. I believe that these same technologies could yield substantial growth and adoption in the product configuration arena. The maturation of real-time transaction and integration technologies may not sound exciting, but I’ll be looking for advances in real-time transaction processing. The industry has seen large growth in policy uploads and downloads, but I’m expecting to see increases in real-time servicing, endorsements, and policy issuance.

What is the message you would leave with insurance companies?

Ensure that you are not implementing the next obsolete legacy system. Take a good look at the business processes and IT solutions in which you have invested. If your next system does not embrace change, then neither have you.