Digitizing the insurance process – are you ready?

"Data is one of our most important assets, and also one of the most underutilized assets," said Harris-Ferrante. "How do we more effectively and strategically use data in our organizations?"

According to a survey of conference attendees conducted by Garnter before the start of the conference, big data/analytics was the number one trend that will have the greatest impact on the industry in the next three years (say 79 percent of participants). Other important trends noted were:

• Digitization (78 percent)
• Consumer adoption of mobile technologies (77 percent)
• Greater need for cybersecurity (67 percent)
• Growth in e-commerce and direct-to-consumer sales (65 percent)
• New and potential regulatory threats (59 percent)
• Threats from non-traditional competitors (51 percent)

"It's interesting to note that direct-to-consumer, or digitization, has popped to the top, this is much different than a few years ago," said Harris-Ferrante.

Digitization requires customer-centricity, she noted.

"You need to have a single view of the customer, one that tells you behavioral preferences, transaction history and channel of choice." You also need:

• Customer analytics
• Customer involved crowdsourcing
• Customer communications management
• Customer experience management
• Multichannel integration
• Customer-centric product design

As Ferrante-Harris noted, there is heightened focus on improving insurance company websites, "but they're still elementary/." She added that there are basic improvements, but the technology is not totally interactive.

"You have to ask yourselves, are we trying to be as good as other life insurance companies or are we trying to be as good as other companies?"