Insurance, along with banking, was among the first industries toadopt information technology, back in the 1970s and early 1980s.What was a bold move at the time, however, has burdened today'sinsurance industry with a legacy of inflexible, archaic, andunfriendly systems that are poorly suited to the demands of today'sbusiness.

The root of the problem stares every claim adjuster in the facewhen he logs onto the claim processing system each morning: acryptic, text-based screen that can be navigated only by typingarcane key combinations into non-intuitive places on the screen.Twenty years after Apple commercialized the point-and-clickinterface, most adjusters still do their jobs without a mouse or,for that matter, a shift key, as their systems only use capitalletters. More importantly, these aging systems have no impact on aclaim's eventual outcome, serving simply as record-keepingdevices.

Although well aware of the time warp in which claim adjusters(and most other people in the industry) live, the majority of claimand IT departments have only nibbled around the edges of theproblem. Wary of replacing systems that few people in the companystill have the skills to understand, companies have instead boltednew tools onto the peripheries of those systems, providingincremental benefits but leaving the core problem untouched.