Technology for Insurance

Open source software has certainly had an impact on the worlds of business and computing. The clearest example of this is the open source Apache web server. Netcraft (www.netcraft.com) reports that in June of 2007 it was the most popular web server on the public internet with more than 65 million sites being hosted on Apache servers. Microsoft’s IIS ran a distant 2nd with just under 44 million. That’s pretty amazing when you consider the muscle Microsoft has put into positioning their systems as being Internet ready.

So what is open source software and is it important to the insurance business. The idea behind open source software is an interesting one. A group of people deciding to collaborate on a piece of software to solve some problem they share is remarkable enough, but then to decide to share that software with anyone who wants it in the hope that they will work to improve it over time is profound indeed.

The natural question for me is “How can an insurance carrier, MGA or agent benefit from open source?”. There are open source projects that help to solve a wide range of problems that nearly all organizations in the insurance business have. Document management, business process management, OLAP, web services, the list is almost inexhaustible.

In future blogs I will look at specific open source projects and how they can benefit the insurance business.

Bill Gates is rumored to have called the Insurance industry “the Amish” of the financial services world. I think a lot has changed since he made that comment, but it’s clear that there is still room for the Insurance business to improve the way it makes use of technology to improve customer service and bottom lines.

There are leaders in this trend of course, but many companies especially small and mid-sized companies are struggling to find ways to effectively leverage technologies like the Internet to improve their position in the market. I will use this space to discuss how powerful new technologies (and some not so new ones) are impacting the Insurance business.

Look for news soon!

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