Tuscaloosa, AL (June 30, 2016) – Insuresoft, a leading insurance processing solution provider for property and casualty insurance carriers, today announced the successful conclusion of the IASA IT Town Hall. The IT Town Hall is an open forum session with a panel of industry professionals, who discuss trends, answer questions, and share their experiences managing insurance IT. Every year, the panel is comprised of an impressive, diverse group of IT leaders, and this year was no exception.
Tony Villa, Insuresoft’s CEO, moderated the panel which included Rusty Sproat, founder and CEO of Figo Pet Insurance; Jim Streicher, Vice President of IT at Cincinnati Insurance Companies; and Tony Jacob, Managing Director, Worldwide Insurance at Microsoft Corporation. Having a startup, a fortune 500 insurer, and a Microsoft business development leader on the panel gave audience members a wide perspective of what’s happening in insurance IT. While their business models couldn’t be more distinct, the underlying themes and trends in the industry applied to all. The three main topics discussed were digital transformation, disrupters/disruption, and innovation as a culture.
Digital transformation was a large part of the conversation. “Change in digital technologies is happening much more quickly than ever before”, said Tony Jacob. “The job of IT professionals is never over. As soon as one technology project completes, another will soon be on the horizon.” This is the challenging but exciting new role of insurance IT. Figo and Cincinnati Insurance adapt to the rapid rate of change by using the Diamond Suite, which easily integrates with other applications, so all their systems talk to each other. Customers today expect that no matter how they communicate with you (social, mobile, web, chat, etc.), your representatives can quickly and easily get them the information they need. Figo and Cincinnati Insurance are also approaching data in a different way. “All data doesn’t need to be stored, because there is simply too much data that can be collected”, said Jim Streicher. “We store only what data is considered valuable and grab it as needed.”
Disruptors were another part of the conversation as many are shifting from the business model of “value from exchange” to “value from use”. Figo’s Pet Cloud is an example of value from use, which provides everything policyholders need for their pet’s life, free of charge. “Pet owners can access their vet bills, find pet walkers in their area, find other pet owners who want to meet up, and of course, access their pet insurance info and file a claim” said Rusty Sproat. “By providing the pet cloud for free, pet owners are already using our app and rely on us, so hopefully they will turn to Figo when they are ready to buy pet insurance.”
“It was a pleasure hosting the IT Town Hall at IASA”, said Tony Villa. “Based on the diverse and thought-provoking panel, I believe the audience walked away from the discussion feeling inspired and full of enthusiasm. We are looking forward to the 2017 IASA IT Town Hall as the rate of change in technology will certainly bring new innovations and trends that our 2016 selves couldn’t have imagined.”
