Tuesday 27 January 2015

Seeing claims and risks in 3D : Might HoloLens succeed where Google Glass didn’t?


There have been radical changes in user interface and computing technology over the last decade or two. The Nintendo Wii propelled a new style of gaming to the forefront and touch enabled smart devices have done wonders for Apple, Samsung and Google’s Android platform. All of this seems to have made Microsoft’s old WIMP based Windows platform less relevant, despite moves to touch enabled interfaces and Windows mobile in recent years.


Perhaps now though Microsoft has found the key to the next generation interface with HoloLens. With a tip to Google Glass this is a wearable headset based system more focused on enabling the holograph interface to interact using augmented reality to undertake various tasks. Perhaps Microsoft have found the killer App Google Glass was missing? Or perhaps the high end 3D gaming style interfaces are better at capturing our imagination than the simpler, untilitarian mobile interfaces we find on todays phones….


What might this mean for the Insurance industry? The interfaces and augmentations imagined for loss adjusters and those in the field apply equally to this new technology, albeit the headset is much more intrusive. Leveraging this technology to engage with people on the ground and share a common visualisation, to direct loss engineers to the right items and help provide data about clients in catastrophe affected areas in a rich and useful manner are all possible.


Augmented reality and chunky headsets aren’t new, but the experiences previewed by HoloLens have sparked the imagination of those who have seen and played with it. With the response to HoloLens being very positive so far I wonder if we will see a relaunch of Google Glass or it’s successor sooner than one might have expected.


For those who are interested the technology appears to have it’s origins in big data, as this article from April last year talks about leveraging the Holograph interface for visualising large datasets.






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Monday 26 January 2015

On the cusp: regional integration in Asia

It’s 2015, the mid-point of the decade and a good time to start looking at major trends in Asian financial services over the next five to ten years.


One of the major themes will be regional integration, which is another way of saying the development of cross-border markets. There are at least two important threads here: the ongoing internationalization of China’s currency, and the development of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in Southeast Asia.


RMB internalization is really about the loosening of China’s capital controls and its full-fledged integration into the world economy. And everyone seems to want a piece of this action, including near neighbors such as Singapore who are vying with Hong Kong to be the world’s financial gateway to China.


The AEC is well on its way to becoming a reality in 2015, with far-reaching trade agreements designed to facilitate cross-border expansion of dozens of services industries, including financial sectors. While AEC is not grabbing global headlines the way China does, we see increasing interest in Southeast Asia among our FSI and technology vendor clients.


From Celent’s point of view, both trends will open significant opportunities across financial services. In banking, common payments platforms and cross-border clearing. In capital markets, cross-border trading platforms for listed and even OTC products. In insurance, the continued development of regional markets.


Financial institutions will be challenged to create new business models and technology strategies to extract the opportunities offered by regional integration. It’s the mid-point of the decade, and the beginning of something very big.






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Friday 23 January 2015

World Economic Forum

As you all likely know, the World Economic Forum is this week in Davos.


I have reviewed much of the information, as the world economy interests me, and one area was the list of 100 strategic partners.


I clearly do not know every company but it appears that 13 of the 100 are banks. That makes sense, given the topics.


So I look at companies whose focus is insurance. We are a huge part of the economy, so I thought we would be equally represented.


Just six.


Two are local Swiss insurance giants — Zurich and Swiss Re, so you would expect them to be involved.


One is a huge world-wide insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting firm — MMC (full disclosure, Celent is a part of MMC).


That leaves three insurers.


Aetna

Old Mutual

Prudential


I obviously don’t know why other major insurers are not involved, but it does seem interesting. My perception, having been in this industry for over 30 years, has always been that insurance companies are followers, not leaders.


You only have to look at our research on online customer service in the Life insurance industry to see that, as an industry, we are not very advanced.


Shouldn’t we be? What is really keeping insurers from leading in multiple areas? We have experts in risk and financial management. We have experts in technology. We know everything there is to know about mortality and morbidity.


Shouldn’t we be leading?






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Friday 16 January 2015

Google Glass is Dead–Long Live Google Glass!

On January 15, Google announced that Google Glass was not ready for prime time. Google is withdrawing it from general availability, but says it will relaunch at some unspecified future date.


With the benefit of unaided 20-20 hindsight, Google Glass was a consumer product designed by engineers to appeal to, well, other engineers. Consumers who bought the $1500 device, started to be called a number of things, but “cool” was not one of them.


The form/function of Google Glass (a hands-free, heads-up display, sourcing various kinds of data and information, with a video recording capability) suggests several business uses, for example, in insurance: field loss estimators and loss control engineers. And there are of course many other professions with similar needs (e.g. service and repair technicians).


The form/function of Google Glass will live on, probably in several diverging incarnations. But whether any of these descendants will be recognizably a “Google Glass” or whether their wearers/users will ever be cool; remains to be seen.






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Wednesday 14 January 2015

Life in the Cloud – Vendor Activity is High

Few technologies are talked about as much as cloud computing. Cloud services may top the list of technology buzzwords used in corporate board rooms, by Wall Street analysts, in the trade media and within insurance IT organizations, but it often is talked about as an emerging technology – one that is potentially transformative but still little used.


The level of general interest in cloud computing is understandable. It promises tremendous flexibility, tempting economic advantages, and unending operational efficiencies. To that end, insurance carriers are dependent on the cloud offerings available. Only if vendors are offering products on the cloud can carriers take advantage of them.


So where are the vendors? Do all vendors have cloud applications? What options are available for insurance carriers and are they aligned with carriers on the importance of cloud apps? What challenges do vendors face, and what are their plans for the future?


I surveyed 41 vendors to provide answers to these questions as well as to understand pricing models, platform investments, and their expectations of where the market is going.


Cloud has grown from an emerging trend to the way of doing business for most vendors in a remarkably short time. While vendors may believe they are leading the competition by offering a cloud solution, the reality is that cloud options are now the norm. Vendors have moved swiftly to create cloud offerings and those that don’t have some type of offering are rare. Although these offerings are common, that doesn’t change the very real and significant concerns that carriers have, particularly around privacy issues and performance.


Yet carriers interest in cloud computing continues to gain traction as a way of managing costs, improving efficiencies, and offering opportunities to transform the business. Despite the high interest, vendors who wish to be successful in selling cloud options to carriers will have to address concerns in three key areas: privacy and data integrity, reliability and performance, and may want to provide tools to help carriers learn to manage and govern their cloud offerings.


This rapid evolution is not without its challenges for vendors. Customer-facing challenges are of high concern for vendors include issues such as managing the release cycle across multiple clients balancing front end, customer facing features reliability and performance enhancing features, and the impact of a changing target market customer base. Vendors are also concerned about identifying the right pricing model. Managing the shifting business model from license and professional service fees to subscriptions is formidable for many vendors. In addition, cloud creates notable organizational challenges, especially competing for scarce engineering resources.


Cloud is expected to generate significant levels of revenue, and vendors that have not put their cloud plans together may want to begin to build a roadmap for the future.


Check out the report – Life in the Cloud: Vendor Plans and Priorities






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