Insurance Industry case study
Insurers want to grow much faster than they did in the past: customer focus, mixed products, shift towards new services, transfer of tasks to partners and customers, different distribution networks, Process optimization, international Synergies, use of new media, ...
But their insurance Model, consisting of a multitude of disparate Solutions that have added gradually becomes too complex to allow these evolutions.
Better management of exchanges between different Solutions is not enough, it is necessary to reduce the number of Solutions.
But how to do, while there are so many differences between P/C( Property and Casualty) and Life, Individual and Group, contract management and claims management ...?
We must seek what is common inside products of insurance or between underwriting and claims Processes, which information is shared on customers, which user interfaces or security Functions or editing Functions could be reused, ... then Model all these in a powerful Foundation common to all business lines.
This Foundation not only simplifies the whole Model and thus accelerates developments, but also provides a consistent usage of IT Solutions which allows all forms of organization.
To achieve this, we must convince the top executives, which are in charge of the “common good” which includes Foundation. We must obtain their support and adequate resources over time. We must adapt the governance rules, the teams, make the right choices and find a progressive path. It also requires that software editors agree to make available the Foundation because insurers have not anymore the time to build it.
Insurers who will win ultimately are not necessarily those with the best ideas, but those who have the ability to quickly implement the good ideas of others because they have become agile.
This document is an attempt to explain the key issues to the leaders of insurance companies and all those involved in this debate: strategy, marketing, organization, or IT. Exercise is difficult because the organizational and IT aspects are often ignored by those leaders: they have rarely had the opportunity to acquire IT knowledge, and IT experts have not always been very clear.
Nevertheless, we hope to help illuminate this complex debate, avoiding as much as possible to use computer jargon.
This case study has been developped using the language of CEISAR ; some definitions are given in the Exhibit as "Model", "Business Model", "Operation," Transformation, " Solution "," Foundation ". To recognize these words, their first letter is upper case to recognize them more easily.
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