IASA 2011: Strategy, Execution Are Focus at CIO/CTO Roundtable

Today, Chief Information and Technology Officers are pressured to automate and modernize systems while staying within the constraints of budgets that have shrunk in recent years. Tuesday’s CIO/CTO Roundtable focused on how technology executives are meeting that challenge.

“Our presenters are people who have “been there, done that,” says roundtable coordinator Ernie Pearson, IT director - applications development, SECURA. “These sessions are very much peer-to-peer. It’s not theory; it’s examples. It’s not hypothetical situations; it’s case studies. It’s how we applied technology, how it worked, and what lessons were learned.”

Although CIOs and CTOs face common challenges, each deals with unique scenarios that are influenced by different business priorities and impacted by different markets, budgets, and company makeup.

“We sought out and found a variety of speakers for this roundtable, representing large multiline carriers as well as smaller, single-product carriers,” Pearson says. “We looked for a real diversity of perspective and experience.”

The roundtable opens with a two-part session. The first part, “Defining Today’s Insurance Economic Environment,” features Frank Conde, chief investment strategist, Prime Advisors, Inc. Conde will provide insights into how the insurance industry is faring and what may be coming next in terms of economic trends, profitability, and expense pressures. This presentation will provide a high-impact overview of the economic state of the insurance industry, including specific details for life, health, and property/casualty insurers.

 “The key takeaway will be learning how companies are responding to the economic climate,” Pearson says. “Have carriers become more cautious? Are they looking for a more immediate ROI and steering clear of things that are abstract or that offer a less clearly defined benefit? How are areas such as outsourcing being affected? Those are all topics attendees will be interested in.”

Conde’s remarks will set up the second half of the session, focused on “Cost Justifying New Technology Investment.” Moderating the session is Mike Foerst, vice president information systems and CIO, Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance. Panel members include Doug Allen, vice president/director of information technology, State Auto; Victor Carneiro, director, information systems/CIO, CompSource; and Barrie Parker, CTO, Pharmacists Mutual Insurance Company.

“With constant pressure to the business applied by economic challenges, strategic objectives, and competing priorities, CIOs are often asked to justify the cost of new IT investments,” Pearson says. “On one hand, companies are looking for ways to improve operational efficiency or even to find that ‘game changing’ project that will transform the way they do business. But on the other hand, they may be reluctant to make an investment in technologies that can deliver those capabilities if there is not a clear cost justification.”

The next session looks at “Information Overload” and the need for insurers to become data-driven. “One of the criticisms of our industry is that we collect a ton of data, then don’t turn around and make effective use of it,” says Pearson.

Insurers continue to struggle not only with the sheer volume of data, but with data that comes in different formats and resides in many different places. This session will detail proven applications of tools that turn data into actionable information, such as business intelligence and predictive analytics solutions.

“There has been strong interest in business intelligence projects that allow insurers to organize and query the data so that they can drill down and determine where they are making money and where they are losing money. This is being done not just at the product or geographic level, but at an increasingly fine level of granularity,” Pearson says.

Moderating the session is Jeff Bemis, CIO, SECURA Insurance Companies. Panelists include Paul Friedmann, divisional senior vice president, Great American Insurance; Al Parisian, CIO, Montana State Fund; and Paul Ayoub, CIO, Hastings Mutual Insurance Company.

The session’s luncheon program will provide attendees the opportunity to learn more about analytics. Featuring Craig Bedell, worldwide industry executive, insurance business analytics, IBM, the luncheon will detail the role analytics technology plays in today’s business of insurance and provide examples of where leading-edge systems are now focused.

Predictive analytics is proving its worth to help companies operate better at both the strategic and tactical level. Strategically, analytics are essential to the highly tiered rating structures used by leading carriers. Tactically, analytics can supplement the years of experience and knowledge of expert staff by using algorithms to determine future account performance, claims outcomes, and more.

After the luncheon, the roundtable will shift its focus from CIOs and CTOs to provide a perspective on how CEOs view technology and its strategic use in the insurance enterprise.

“The way the IT function is perceived and how it can be used strategically differs from the CIO to the CEO suite,” Pearson says. “At some carriers, technology is an afterthought—an enabling tool. At other companies, technology is viewed as a differentiator. We want to look at ways that both of these viewpoints can create successful technology outcomes for insurance carriers.”

Matthew Josefowicz, partner and managing director, Novarica, will moderate the session. Panelists include Mark A. Robison, chairman and president, Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company; and Tom Mulligan, CEO, Western World Insurance Group.

Lastly, the CIO/CTO roundtable will feature a look at emerging technologies. Going beyond the buzzwords, the final session will focus on how to use emerging technologies to achieve tangible benefits. Topics may include cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS), social networking, and more.

Moderator Bill Freitag, CEO and managing partner, Agile Technologies, will be joined by panel members Matthew McKernan, President, Vertafore Carrier & MGA Markets; Sloan Plumer, Chief Technology Officer, Computer Sciences Corporation; Robert Puccinelli, Director of Financial Services Solutions Marketing, EMC; and Andy Scurto, President, ISCS, Inc.

“This session is not focused on any one product, or even any one type of technology,” Pearson says. “We will take a customer-focused approach and look at ways insurers can use emerging technology to sell products, deliver information, and better serve customers.”