Malik's Blog

The IT component in insurance industry performance By Martin Hjerpe, Georg Paulus, and Thierry SeilerArticle Actions Top companies in our survey grind down costs by consolidating IT and rationalizing processes. They’re growing faster as well. The Great Recession has caused plenty of pain in the European insurance industry. Rock-bottom interest rates have reduced returns on the insurers’ holdings, while economic disruption continues to increase the volume of claims payouts. Not all companies are suffering, of course; indeed, many are thriving. For insights into the factors that distinguish the top performers from the rest of the pack, we surveyed more than 80 life insurers and property-and-casualty (P&C) insurers across Europe. 1 We were particularly interested in identifying the factors that most directly contributed to their superior cost performance, including product development, marketing, sales support, operations, and IT, as well as other support functions. Despite the str...

Using Technology for Right or Wrong Vasant Raval, DBA, CISA, ACMA | Published: 4/11/2016 3:08 PM | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0) Technology, including its byproducts, is most likely value-neutral. By itself, it seems unable to commit any wrongdoing. And yet, we find so many scenarios in which technology provides a breeding ground for nurturing a wrongful act, as if luring people to take advantage of it. Features offering anonymity, as in the case of e-currency, offer confidentiality assurance. But they could also mask illegitimate or illegal transactions. Bitcoin can neither prevent, nor should it promote, illegal use of its currency system. But then, once the system is open for everyone’s use, who would guard against morally or legally improper use of the system? Apparently, technology appears to be a weak partner in the process of prevention or detection of moral compromises, but this may change in the future. Remoteness from the locus of impact of a transaction s...