Society for Insurance Research Members Pan for Idea Gold in Charlotte

Charlotte, North Carolina (Credit: Shutterstock)

The people who act as the information prospectors and information miners for U.S. insurers have spent the past three days trying to improve their techniques from separating the gold from the sand.

Members of the Society of Insurance Research (SIR) talked about data gathering and data sifting ideas this week at SIR's 49th annual conference. The three-day conference started in Charlotte, North Carolina, Sunday and is ending today.

Property and casualty insurers dominate the Minneapolis-based group's board and conference track session, but the group has a life/health conference track. Mike Myers of USAA leads the SIR annual conference committee's life/health track.

Myers is also SIR's 2019-2020 president-elect.

The list of top conference sponsors and exhibitors includes many of the companies that help insurers run polls, tap public records databases, gather and analyze financial data, and organize all of the available information. Some of the companies that might be familiar to life, annuity and health issuers are A.M. Best, Conning, Corporate Insight, Greenwald & Associates, Jornaya, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Mintel, S&P Global Market Intelligence and TransUnion.

The SIR Conference Life and Health Sessions

During the life/health track sessions, held Monday, Robert Lajdziak of J.D. Power talked about strategies for using data to improve customer service.

Tara Clemens of Mintel Comperemedia and Jeremy Sambol of Mutual of Omaha discussed Medicare plan marketing trends.

Jeff Mann of Zeldis Research Associates Inc. discussed consumers' and physicians' views on emerging health care technology tools, such as use of the data from consumer DNA testing, and use of health data available from devices such as the Apple Watch.

Josh Everett, a vice president at Ameritas Life Corp., and Jane Wang, the chief executive officer of Optimity, a company that offers a mobile device-based health coaching app, talked about how to meet consumers' expectations of engagement, and "how to leverage [a] health risk assessment data pipeline that is organic and authentic (vs. creepy)," according to SIR's conference guide.

SIR Numbers

SIR reported $96,250 in operating income for 2017 on $274,146 in revenue and $389,586 in assets, according to the most recent Form 990 annual report available for SIR at FoundationCenter.org.

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