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2 weeks ago | 
celent.com | Karen Monks
Recently I spent a day with a North American client discussing the life insurance market. We had an active discussion about how the life insurance industry is at a pivotal crossroads. While the need for protection remains as vital as ever, insurers are facing a troubling reality: declining volumes of new life insurance policies and rising costs per policy.
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1 month ago | 
celent.com | Karen Monks
A recent open letter from Patrick Odet, CISO of JP Morgan urges SaaS software providers to do more to secure their systems. He suggests that competition is forcing vendors to prioritize functionality over security and the result is a “quiet enablement of cyber attackers.”Odet brings up a very important point as so many industries, insurance included head into a digital technology world underpinned by cloud based solutions and solution providers.
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Feb 26, 2025 | 
celent.com | Nicolas Michellod |Karen Monks
What keeps life insurance CIOs up at night? In the ever-evolving landscape of financial services, understanding the challenges faced by life insurance CIOs is crucial for strategic planning. Tune into our Life Insurance Dimensions: IT Pressures & Priorities 2025 webinar as we delve into the business and IT priorities of life insurance CIOs, exploring their investment plans and the latest trends in IT budgets.
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Feb 6, 2025 | 
celent.com | Karen Monks
I recently read an article on mortality slippage as a result of automated underwriting (AUW). Mortality slippage—when carriers unintentionally allow high-risk applicants to bypass rigorous vetting and place them in a better risk class than had they gone through full underwriting—is a real risk to the financial health of a life insurance company.
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Feb 4, 2025 | 
celent.com | Karen Monks
4 February 2025 Annually, Celent examines the business priorities, IT budgets, and investments being made by North American life insurance company technology executives. Celent publishes similar reports on EMEA, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. In November and December 2024, Celent distributed an online survey to North American life and annuity insurance company technology executives, across both individual and group lines.
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Sep 30, 2024 | 
celent.com | Karen Monks
I am very excited to attend my second ITC Vegas conference. My hope is to have a voice since last year I lost my voice on the first day. If you have not already requested meetings with me or my colleagues, reach out to us and we'll work on finding 15 minutes to chat!What I really hope is that if you are attending, you will register for Celent's pre-ITC conference session on Tuesday afternoon.
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Jul 8, 2024 | 
celent.com | Karlyn Carnahan |Karen Monks
8 July 2024New Developments in Technology and Functionality Out of necessity, insurers are becoming much more sophisticated in how they think about distribution management. While the primary channel for both life and property casualty is independent agents, most insurers are experimenting with other channels (or have made them a fundamental part of their distribution strategy).
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Jul 8, 2024 | 
celent.com | Karlyn Carnahan |Karen Monks
Use of distribution management systems is increasing due to a variety of changes happening in the market. The increase in insurance agency mergers and acquisitions, the proliferation of channels, and the growing demand for data are driving a need for new sophistication in the tools necessary to manage agents. These solutions typically include one or more of three components—compliance, compensation, and performance management.
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May 17, 2024 | 
celent.com | Karen Monks
Life insurers are used to owning systems for decades. It’s certainly not a stretch to think that some of you reading still have Life70 running! And it’s certainly understandable that many of you have begun replacing those and other systems with Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms. SaaS is a software distribution model in which a cloud provider hosts (or contracts a third-party cloud provider to host) applications and makes them available to end users over the internet.
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Mar 27, 2024 | 
celent.com | Karen Monks
Life insurers were forced to digitize the sales process during the pandemic. Their move to direct-to-consumer sales (D2C) saw its peak (7+% of total premiums) in 2021 with strong sales of term insurance, but by December 2023, only about 6% of life insurance was bought D2C. The effort to attract and sell a limited number of products online proved to be more difficult than selling through agents.
