Establishing the core competencies of an insurance carrier may sound like a great deal of work involving research and self-examination. However, Donald Light, senior analyst in the insurance group for Celent, contends it all comes down to two major questions insurers need to answer concerning the amount of internal development capability they require: "Do you want to write a lot of applications with your own staff? Or do you have a preference to buy applications from software vendors and view your own staff as doing integration, maintenance work, or minor kinds of development?"

The answers will help carriers determine their core competencies, particularly within the IT department, where staffing issues and changing business processes present a challenge to CIOs.

But where does an assessment of internal capabilities begin? Bill Jenkins, CIO of Penn National Insurance, explains any assessment should start with what the company is good at. Being good at something isn't necessarily the same as having a core competency in that area, though. "If you are good at payroll and payroll is not a differentiator for you, so what?" he says. "That's something you easily can outsource."

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader

Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.