As premiums begin to erode in a soft market, insurance carriers are looking for growth opportunities outside of their core portfolio of products. This is especially true for carriers that operate in closed or very competitive markets, where commoditization pressures are high. One way to achieve growth in these types of environments is to identify new or niche product opportunities to expand the product portfolio-and then to develop, configure, and release those new products to market faster than competitors can.
However, getting a new insurance product to market can take some carriers more than 180 days. By the time an opportunity is identified and the new product is released, the opportunity may have passed or competitors may have already filled that market need.
The lengthy time needed to develop new insurance products is largely related to the time and expense of connecting to various inflexible legacy systems so as to tap the data on those systems to define and underwrite new policies. Carriers are looking for ways to reduce the challenges associated with developing new products and to outpace competitors while working with their legacy systems. Industry leaders are aiming for 90-day product development cycles, with the best of the best hoping for cycles of 35 to 40 days.
Microsoft technology enables carriers to outpace competitors by quickly developing new products that integrate legacy systems with newer, more agile solutions.
The focus within product configuration has been on gaining agility out of existing systems to support improved product design and development. Microsoft tools and technologies have the best total cost of ownership in the marketplace and can save carriers significant effort in implementing these solutions.
| Vision/Outcome | Identify and capitalize on new product opportunities more quickly than competitors with greater accuracy on risk selection and pricing. |
|---|
| Benefits | Insurers gain agility from existing policy administration systems and shorten product configuration cycles. Insurers can migrate information from legacy tools to up-to-date systems or surround existing systems with a common desktop, cohesive interface, and central information repository for greater agility and access. |
|---|
| Differentiator | Easily integrate a new product development and configuration capability with existing systems for fast and easy configuration of rules for underwriting, pricing, workflow, and assessment questions. Implement solutions that sit on top of and easily integrate with existing systems to continue to benefit from previous technology investments. |
|---|
Microsoft Solution Attributes
New Product Opportunities: Solutions built on Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework, Host Integration Server, and BizTalk Server allow insurance carriers to convert data from legacy applications through an Enterprise Service bus and present that data in the most appropriate user interface-Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Office applications such as Excel, or PerformancePoint. SQL Server is used to integrate and analyze the data. Windows Communication Foundation provides a unified framework for rapidly building service-oriented applications that make it easy to build and consume secure, reliable, and transacted Web services. This allows carriers to save money by integrating existing systems with newer, more agile solutions instead of completely replacing existing mainframes.
Agility: By extracting and then centralizing business rules once housed in legacy applications, insurers can greatly improve performance in product development. Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework, an Enterprise Service bus created with BizTalk Server, Windows Communication Foundation, and Windows Presentation Foundation make it possible to efficiently extract and centralize the necessary business rules. The information is integrated and analyzed through SQL Server and accessed through SharePoint sites, Office applications, or Microsoft Silverlight Web 2.0 portals.
Integration: By utilizing solutions built on Microsoft's Host Integration Server and the .NET 3.0 Framework, insurers gain tools that easily integrate new product development and configuration capabilities on top of their existing systems. In addition, Microsoft BizTalk Services provide hosted services developers can use to rapidly build loosely coupled applications that are scalable and secure. Windows Communication Foundation provides a unified framework for rapidly building service-oriented applications that make it easy to build and consume secure, reliable, and transacted Web services.
