Car insurance companies use obsolete customer demographic profiles in order to create rates and premiums. According to a report, big data allows car insurance companies to use complex data analytics to examine millions of customers at once, which results in providing accurate data and real-time correlations between driver behaviors and demographics. Big Data is also preventing fraud, policy profiling. In short, big data is revolutionizing the insurance industry. Read more at:  http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/accessible-bi/big-datas-impact-on-insurance-70027

# Technologies like self-service and social media are important, if insurers need to communicate, face-to-face, with customers, since, it is the best form of transferring information, till date. People working on data insights need good communication skills to convey their findings to customers, who may not understand the technical language.
# Organizational collaboration is always important between two institutions if they are supposed to work together, so that they can share their technologies and focus on other business priorities, in harmony.
# As customers are generating more and more data, insurers are turning to analytics in order to interpret the data.
# With increasing data security breaches, insurers need skills to address the vulnerabilities and manage the situation in case of a security breach.
# Insurance technology professionals must be ready to embrace the evolving technology in order to survive the competition.
# Insurers need to think creatively of utilizing the multitude of technologies, available, in order to improve customer relations.
# Social media skills are required to build customer relations, as well as, create a brand image for the concern. 
Read more at:

http://www.insurancetech.com/management-strategies/7-tech-skills-for-insurance-pros-/d/d-id/1319170?image_number=2

In terms of technological advancement, insurance industry is considered as a late mover or rigid in terms of adapting. In contrast to manufacturing industry, where organizations have spent most of the past two decades standardizing their IT, in insurance industry, the use of proprietary software systems is still the norm. This is because of the following reasons:

• High levels of complexity
• Immature software market
• Budget constraints
• Inertia

Despite these factors, the future of insurance industry lies in the standardization of its softwares. These steps will not only lead to cost reduction and reduction in adaption time, but will also give the firms - a first mover advantage - in terms of multi-channel marketing, digital-product innovations and straight-through claims processing. For this, Mckinsey experts have identified five critical success factors. They are:

• Technologies
• Transformation
• Team
• Timing
• Transparency

To understand them in detail, please read this highly informative article by Sanjay Kaniyar, Peter Peters, and Ulrike Vogelgesang at Mckinsey.com:

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/transitioning_to_standard_software_lessons_from_erp_pioneers

There is a lack of awareness about the insurance sector but it has a lot of attractive and interesting propositions to offer. Amendments have been made to the Insurance Act, 1938.  Foreign investment ceiling in insurance companies has been increased which will boost job opportunities and growth potential. But, talent retention is a challenge in this sector. Economic and regulatory changes have affected this sector. This led to companies adopting short term policies over long term ones. It is also predicted that salary structures would increase slowly with average increment levels at 8% for the current year. Read more at:

http://info.shine.com/article/talent-retention-is-a-big-challenge-for-insurance-firms/8814.html

Insurers are today trawling big data about customers’ finances and other sources. The development shows how access to big data is revolutionizing the insurance industry and companies are accessing a wide range of information on everything from financial probity to shopping habits of the customers to determine the risk premium for individual customer. One official of AA insurance company said that the winners in the insurance market will be the ones that have got the data insights that others don’t have. It could be supermarkets, banks or social media companies. However, ultimately the big data trend means some policyholders will pay more than others not for the climate change only but also for insurers to know more about the risks posed by particular properties. But, as with the sensitive data some companies also go far beyond what customers would expect them to do with it, customers should be given the option to opt in to such analysis than allowing them to opt out. Read more at:http://analytics.theiegroup.com/article/53c7a5c03723a8014f0000cd/Insurers-Trawl-Big-Data-For-Clues

The concept of transferring an existing platform to the cloud appears to have many businesses stumped, including those in the insurance industry. Cloud service providers like Microsoft, Oracle and VMware are not going to wait for the insurance company to make up their mind about it. So by the time they do, they could be restricted to having their data still on old hardware systems. But if the insurance industries do not move soon in enough into the cloud - whether that's adopting a private, public or hybrid model, there could be repercussions in the future as everybody could be worse off and face higher costs and risks of running old systems, and being noncompetitive.

 To gather more information about this aspect, follow Aimee Chanthadavong, tech journalist with ZDNet's, article link http://www.zdnet.com/insurance-industry-under-pressure-to-plug-into-the-cloud-7000026920/