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 [...]

I’m guessing that somewhere in your strategy documentation will be an objective that states that you will succeed as an insurance company through ‘being innovative’. It may be presented up-front as a bold strategic theme or it may be hidden deep down in the depths of a key initiative. I’m also guessing that, for many of you, [...]

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 [...]

Social Media has established a foothold in many insurers in the United States. However, strategies, goals and results vary widely. In order to shed some light on why and how this new tool is being used by insurers to enhance their businesses, Celent and Locke Lord LLP are conducting a survey among their respective clients [...]

There are some very interesting results in the recent Accenture survey: “Accenture Interactive Survey: Shoppers Prefer Personalization Over Privacy” (infographic here: http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Shopper-Holiday-Preference-US.pdf) The online survey asked 2,000 UK and US consumers about their preferences across various shopping channels and their use of social media networks as they research and purchase products. (Note: The fact that [...]

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 [...]

Last Wednesday during the Retail Insurance Conference (in Spanish: “Cumbre Internacional de Seguros Masivos”) I had the pleasure of moderating a session panel about “The Future of Retail Insurance in Latin America” with the participation of Hilario Itriago, Director of IT & Operations Latin America for Royal Sun Alliance Group; Felix Chan Head of Science, Commercial [...]

Let’s play Jeopardy together! If the most frequently given answer from a panel of insurance customers is “Don’t know,” what was the question? It was: “Which UK insurer do you think is the most innovative?” For those who think that is an exaggeration of the common opinion that the insurance industry is not innovative at [...]

A brief summary of the ideas around Celent’s 2012 Creative Disruption Event.

I have frequently provided my personal view in this forum about the economic situation insurance companies have been facing since the emergence of the financial crisis back in the end of 2007. I published a post in November last year titled “Time is passing, uncertainty remains“, in which I exposed my view on 3 important [...]