BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - July 14, 2010) - SMA Strategy Meets Action (SMA), a leading insurance industry analyst firm, is pleased to announce the availability of a new report that explores major technology trends and new types of opportunities for insurers that will evolve over the next decade. "Insight on the Future of Insurance: Looking at Technology through the Long Lens," is part of the SMA Strategic Insights research series.
Information and communication technologies (I&CT) are advancing at an astounding pace and combining to create a powerful force for transformation. Capabilities now stretch far beyond the scope of what has traditionally been called DP, EDP, MIS, IS, IT, CTI, and digital telephony. Coupled with scientific developments in areas such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, genomics, and alternative energy, the impact promises to drive staggering change in the world of insurance. As I&CT and scientific advances become more sophisticated and pervasive, new risks will arise and new opportunities for products, channels, and business models will unfold.
"Insight on the Future of Insurance" provides a visionary view, using a 10-year time horizon, of how advances in I&CT will alter the landscape, and describes key implications for the global insurance industry. Using five major I&CT trends, the report describes four profound business shifts and identifies five new areas of opportunities for insurers. For example, massive amounts of information, including intelligence embedded in more and more things, will spur a shift in business strategic focus beyond automation to insight -- insight that will make it possible to instantly negotiate and offer variable product provisions that contain dynamic pricing options.
New opportunities for insurers will result from the introduction of new types of risk and new ways to package, deliver, sell, and service insurance, as well as new ways to price and manage risk. Innovative insurers will employ new business models to gain a competitive edge. Companion insights, documented in SMA's Top 10 Imperatives, provide near-term guidance for insurers by laying out direction for becoming more flexible and adaptable as they position their organizations to capitalize on burgeoning trends and opportunities.
"Insurers that are proactively thinking about the implications of these changes and developing scenarios for the future world of insurance will be better positioned to capitalize on new opportunities," said Mark Breading, SMA partner and author of the report. "Although it is not possible to predict exactly what the world will be like in 2020, it is possible to create a nimble organization with fully coordinated people, process, data, and technology -- an organization that is able to adapt and thrive in the future."
The SMA Strategic Insights Research Series offers insurers, agents, IT solution providers, and venture capital firms a framework for near-term and long-range planning and provides an approach they can use to prepare for future opportunities.
For more information about the SMA Strategic Insights Research Series or SMA's services, please contact Deb Smallwood at 603.770.9090 or dsmallwood@strategymeetsaction.com, or visit the company's website at www.strategymeetsaction.com. All reports are available for purchase online at www.strategymeetsaction.com/our-research.
About SMA Strategy Meets Action
Exclusively serving the insurance industry, SMA is a new breed of strategic advisory firm offering a unique blend of research, advisory and consulting services to both insurance companies and solution providers. By leveraging best practices from both the management consulting and research advisory disciplines, SMA's advisory services are actionable, business-driven and research-based -- a good fit for companies eager and ready to embrace change and achieve business success by taking strategies to meet action. Additional information about SMA can be found at www.strategymeetsaction.com.
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