Insurers, top-level product distributors and tech companies have spent the past 20 years racing to come up with the most advanced, most attention-grabbing tools and features they can think up.
Roger LaVine, vice president of product development at Coconut Creek, Florida-based Computer Solutions and Software International L.L.C., says he thinks the new big thing is companies trying to get all those great tools to work together smoothly.
Really.
Finally.
The company LaVine works for, which is generally known as VUE Software, makes systems that can help health insurers, and life and annuity issuers, manage their complicated distribution organizations, including the maze-like compliance and compensation rules that apply to the people in those organizations.
The people in the life and annuity sector and the health sector may feel as if everything is much more uncertain than it's ever been.
From the perspective of LaVine, who has a doctorate in psychology, the picture looks different.
"The uncertainty is about the same as ever," he said recently in an interview.
But he also talked about seeing two insurance tech Americas.
In one of those insurance tech Americas, the bad one, executives go to bed at night wondering what they will do about all of those old legacy systems that are still using COBOL.
In the good insurance tech America, companies with well-upgraded systems are thinking about new ways to make their systems even more efficient, and to automate even more of the processes that are still being handled manually.
And LaVine has some ideas about how to make the systems more… pleasant.
