Entries by Mark O'Brien

The Right Tool For the Right Job

In the July edition of Best’s Review, Bill Pieroni, president and CEO of ACORD, published an article called, “Underspend, Overperform.” In the article, he made a number of good points, including these, which we’ll address in order: “Superior Performers … demonstrated materially higher levels of digital maturity and the resulting productivity.” The importance of that point […]

The New Three Rs

As human beings and business owners, many changes have been precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic. In contending with everything from restricted travel to social distancing, from working at home to wearing masks in public, we’ve found we’re able to adapt and conform. We’ve also found we’ve been able to learn. In all the lessons available […]

Three Things You Never Want to Hear

If you’ve been in the workforce for a while, regardless of industry, there are three things you never want to hear, read, or experience. You’re likely to encounter them after some undertaking or other has going horribly awry, usually at the point at which the circular firing squad has been assembled or is about to […]

Three Things Your RFP Won’t Tell You

For those new to the insurance industry, the length and complexity of the system-purchasing process must seem overwhelming and, at times, unnecessary. Overkill might come to mind, but the much-maligned request for proposal (RFP) process drives technology selecting and purchasing in the risk-averse insurance industry. For core administration systems (policy, billing, and claims), RFPs can provide […]

The Truth About Customer Experience and Digitalization

We love a good panic as much as the next bunch. But we have to admit we’re not precisely sure what all the fuss is about when it comes to customer experience, particularly in the insurance industry. We completely understand its justifiably increasing importance. But self-service portals have been around long enough to have become […]

(Inter)Mediating Claims

Back at the turn of the century, with Y2K behind us and a new millennium of technology ahead, we were hearing the term, disintermediation, quite a bit. The prevailing assumption was that technology and e-commerce (remember e-commerce?) would replace the agents from which people had theretofore purchased insurance. Even as late as February of 2015, […]

Ready By Design

The outbreak of the coronavirus constitutes a profound test for the insurance industry. More pointedly, it’s a test of your company’s ability to continue operations without staff members being in the office. The fact is, now more than ever, insurers will have to rely on the contingency plans they put in place and the software […]

Fly(wheel) By Night

From conversations you’ve had with us, conversations you’ve had about us, and the messaging you’ve been exposed to (particularly in our blog posts), you’ve likely gotten the gist of our corporate culture. We aren’t a huge operation, but we consider that a strength. We aren’t a small operation, but we’ve managed our growth judiciously. As […]

Deceiving To the Core

A recent review of trends for strategic initiatives in the insurance-industry showed core transformations remaining relatively flat over the period between 2015 and 2020. At first, we wondered why: Is it because the need is constant and is being addressed relative slowly and, perhaps, consistently? Especially in light of the fact that so much marketing […]

The BI (Big Issues) with BI (Business Intelligence)

You’d be forgiven if you thought business intelligence (BI) — along with its two close pals, data and analytics — were chief preoccupations for insurance companies. You’d be forgiven because, according to one study we’ve seen, between 2015 and 2020, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 90 percent of property/casualty insurers considered BI and […]