Recently, Chuck, Thuy and I attended the IASA Boot Camp in Hilton Head Island, SC. The event was started a few years ago by IASA to provide vendors with education and training on the industry, as well as networking and discussing IASA’s events and opportunities. This year’s sessions focused on learning more about how to better engage insurers and understanding their processes for vendor selection and solution purchase decisions. I had the opportunity to speak to the attendees about the challenges facing small carrier technology leaders.
Smaller insurers, typically with less than 25 IT staff and with net premium in the low $100M’s, face the same challenges as their larger peers: modernizing aging core systems, improving customer experience and finding ways to better leverage analytics. These and other concerns are more difficult for smaller carriers since they have fewer resources to dedicate to solutions. As vendors have matured their products and implementations in recent years, they are looking for ways to better meet the needs of smaller insurers.
The Boot Camp also featured presentations on how carriers make purchasing decisions, and on the second day there were lively roundtable discussions on topics that included RFI (Request for Information) and POC (Proof of Concept) processes, and how to better approach the sales process, including demos. I was part of an interesting session that included consultants that have coordinated RFI and POC processes, including me at Novarica, and vendors who have been through various processes from carrier-led to consultant-led. The key takeaway was that frequent and focused communication plays a key role in the success of the process, in particular when the process is used to prepare both vendor and carrier for a partnering relationship.
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