The consumerization of IT is having a significant impact on every insurer and most certainly on every insurer's IT department. There is no escaping the effect. Basically, there are two options for the IT department—try to control it, or work to harness its power. But, the best approach is probably a combination of the two.

The “consumerization of IT” means different things to different people. SMA takes a broad view, defining it as “the abundant availability to the general public of a wide variety of easily used information technologies.”

The consumerization of IT is not just about mobile; it's about bring-your-own devices, bring-your-own apps, build-your-own applications and websites, and use-your-own computing infrastructure (made possible via low cost computing and cloud-based services). It's also about fostering innovation through ideation and crowdsourcing, and the ample availability of tools that provide new insights from internal and external data. The individuals that are leveraging these capabilities are customers, employees, business partners, and other third parties—essentially everyone.

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.