ITA Pro Magazine - April 2014

Content is everywhere. “One challenge that we grapple with here, as most companies do, is the proliferation of content. Technology is making content available more often, in more places, and on more devices, but the ability of companies to effectively manage it is lagging behind,” says Daniel Antion, vice president of information services at American Nuclear Insurers (ANI).

The problem is compounded as the structured data from insurance production systems and third- party information providers has collided with a wealth of unstructured content not housed in traditional databases.

“There is a tremendous amount of consumption and production of content, and that amount has continued to accelerate in recent years,” says Kelley Buchanan, managing director in PwC’s insurance practice. “The term ‘big data’ may be the trendy term today, but the truth is that the big data wave—the sheer volume of information, its veracity, the velocity at which it is received and which continues to increase, and its relative

Delivering Value

For insurers, the struggle lies not just in how to manage all that content from a technical perspective, but how to drive value from it.

“The lines are getting blurry between content
management and analytics,” says Ellen Carney.
“There is a convergence between the two technol-
ogies as insurers struggle to turn all their content
One insurer that is dealing with that con-
vergence is Security First Insurance Company.
The company is applying advanced analytics to
customer communications, starting with the
claims process.

Claims handling is not a simple process, but for most of the history of insurance, managing communications in claims was simplified by the limited number of options customers could work through—primarily mail, phone, and fax. Today, however, communication can come through social media, text, mobile, and other channels that seem to grow and change constantly.

When losses occur, customers expect to be able to use the channel of their choice to file a claim. Security First Insurance recognized the need to not just contend with channel diversity in claims, but also manage the big data that results from it.

“We had been systematically looking at ways customers entered our system—email, phone, mobile—and buttoning them up technologically so we could respond better,” says Werner E. Kruck, chief operating officer at Security First Insurance Company.