Several aspects of this deal stand out. It is the first acquisition by Guidewire, which until now has been a “we build it, we sell it shop.” It augments Guidewire’s capabilities in the hottest part of the technology landscape: Business Intelligence/Analytics. And it reinforces Guidewire’s strategy to capture the community and network effect benefits of [...]

Celent recently held its first UK CIO Agenda Roundtable.   The aim of this event was to bring together senior IT executives from across the UK insurance industry to debate shared topics of interest.  The event was hosted by a CIO’s at their premises, and the prize for hosting was that the CIO got to choose [...]

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 [...]

In conversations with insurers globally we at Celent are hearing of a new approach to analytics. Perhaps not called Big Data but a different approach, one that seeks to leverage data far more quickly and be more tolerant of the errors in the data. There is a move to understanding that all data is useful, [...]

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 [...]

Most cultures reward and encourage success. Growing up, we learn quickly to highlight our brilliance and down play our mistakes. The corporate world we operate in only reinforces that. Do you remember how many times you had to fall off your bike before you could ride it successfully? You had to fail before you got [...]

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 [...]