Cumberland sent four employees to the annual Insurance Accounting & Systems Association (IASA) Conference in San Diego, CA. The conference included vendor connect tours, technical sessions, and more. Some highlights from keynote speakers include:
- “People leave managers, not companies” – Everything is about relationships and how we treat our staff.
- “The bottle neck is always at the top of the bottle” – Be careful not to obstruct the productivity of your staff.
- “Paint a picture of what success looks like” – Before you start a project, have a clear picture of what would be considered success.
- “Do not let perfect be the enemy of good” – Do not wait to implement something until it’s “perfect” when you can obtain immediate benefit by accepting what is good and improving as needed.
- “Many leaders are too busy playing Whack a Mole to look at the future and cast vision” – Leaders need someone else to deal with the daily issues so they can truly lead.
Conference attendees learned the top two reasons people switch insurance carriers are due to price and bad claims experience. In fact, 30% of customers leave after a bad claims experience. Reinforcing ideas such as these help insurance carriers focus on what their customers want. As a result, a number of carriers are aggressively looking into providing online claims statuses. The goal is to decrease the number of poor experiences and retain customers longer.
From an IT perspective, the biggest items of interest discussed included big data, cloud, social media, and mobile technologies. In a poll taken at a keynote session, only 2 out of approximately 200 insurance companies represented at the session have mobile apps running. Fortunately, Cumberland was among the crowd of companies who have invested in social media. If you haven’t already done so, follow the links at the bottom of the screen to view our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
To learn more about the IASA and the conference in San Diego, visit www.iasa.org.
