Mastering Data Management

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Insurers of all flavors can find real benefits from MDM

New competitors entering the insurance market are providing consumers with more choices. Meanwhile, customer expectations have shifted to expect anytime, anywhere access to a comprehensive set of their policy holdings. Incumbents are saddled by legacy systems and information silos that make it difficult to:

• Reconcile a client’s policy holdings
• Comply with regulations
• Enable web-based self-service channels
• Increase product penetration through improved cross-sell/up-sell initiatives

Insurers are looking to obtain a better understanding of the complete set of policies that an individual or business owns, even when that information is spread across disparate policy, claims and billing systems. Insurers want to shift their view from policy-centric to customer-centric, allowing their organization to better service each individual or business customer associated with a policy, and reduce their operational costs going forward.

As I talk to customers, I hear many of these challenges. But I also hear common solutions. Specifically, insurers are turning to master data management to overcome these obstacles, many with great success. I can bundle these successes and benefits into five key groups:

1. Improved customer service. By shifting from policy-centric to customer-centric views, a customer can be recognized across multiple systems, including policy, claims and billing. This helps identify a customer’s complete set of products and transactions, improving customer service by giving the agent or representative the full details they need to efficiently answer questions or help.

2. Increased wallet share. This consolidated customer view can make it easier to identify the most appropriate cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Additionally, insurers can detect customer relationships, such as householding and corporate ownership structures. Householding is very powerful, as it enables insurers to calculate the value of a given customer and provide specialized marketing offers while eliminating multiple mailings.

3. Increased channel effectiveness. The consolidated view of multiple policy holdings, billing and claims information also enables web self-service. Customers are able to access their full policy details when they need them. Agents also benefit from this view, as they can access all the information they need in a single place, leading to greater efficiency.

4. Minimized risk. MDM can help minimize insurance risk by better identifying which customers may be over/under insured.

5. Enhanced compliance. MDM enables insurers to generate accurate and timely reports for regulatory compliance. Insurers can efficiently search and reconcile data to ensure they are compliant with federal regulations.

Are there any other key benefits you’ve seen? Learn more about the IBM InfoSphere MDM Portfolio for Insurance.