The week of April 22nd was something of a landmark in the Celent Peer Networking process. For the first time, we held two events in the same week; the first in Wellesely, Ma. focusing on Group and Voluntary Insurance, and the second in Columbus, Oh. with a focus on Innovation across business lines. I was [...]

Microinsurance is referred to the type of insurance that aims to the base of the pyramid (BoP) population, generally those ignored by mainstream commercial and social insurance schemes. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs, preferences and characteristics of this target group: the low-income household, the working poor and the under-served. Microinsurance has the potential to play [...]

On 15th of March Celent held our creative disruption event at the Tower of London – no small irony to be discussing the future of insurance surrounded by such rich history. Celent’s Catherine Stagg-Macey opened proceedings with a discussion about how quickly technology is moving and by providing a concrete example of that in the [...]

Click, click, click—that’s the sound of more formerly independent policy administration vendors dropping into the product portfolios of larger solution vendors.  Today’s announcement by SAP of its intention to acquire Camilion is another significant move—following rapidly after Insurity’s acquisition of AQS on Tuesday. In both cases the acquirer is getting certain capabilities that augment what [...]

At corporate level we usually conceive and refer to technology focused on the internal use and how to reach to the outside world to provide better products, have more efficient value chains and improve service.  For example insurance portals or technologies that will improve call center performance. This conception has been very useful to the [...]

The use of mobile in insurance is usually related to the self service capabilities insurers can deploy for agents and for upper income groups such as quote, bind, issue, claims and printing, all for which a smartphone is a better device than just a simple mobile. One trend we have recognized is that mobile technology is being used in [...]

With only two sleeps left until the 2012 apocalypse (has it’s own Wikipedia page here) I thought it worth working through an insurance scenario regarding the end of the world as we know it. I won’t go into detail but Friday the 21st of December marks the start of the 13th b’ak’tun or 13.0.0.0.0 (5126 [...]

Here we on the twelfth day of the twelfth month of twenty twelve. (A friend helpfully pointed out we’re 800 years late for 12 12 1212). A quick look at Wikipedia shows the importance that 12 has had in our history, almost regardless of place of birth or religion it seems. It seemed a good [...]

At Celent, we have the opportunity to sit through several dozen demos a year of core systems. And in most demos, I find myself having sympathy for the ultimate end-user. The first thing that pops into my head is not how powerful the system is (and they often are), but how grateful I am not [...]

Ever since we discovered that the internet could be more than just a document repository or shop-front, we have been investing in smart ways to engage our customers better and improve the user experience.  Self-service via a laptop, tablet or mobile device clearly has huge benefits to both the customer who now has access to [...]