Insurance: Insurer Integration Key To Competition

The insurance industry is doing more with less, while striving to compete in an ever-competitive environment. Technology plays a central role, Allstate's Brune says. Her company has been working to improve the efficiencies of its applications and is implementing "enterprise command centers" to monitor incident management, problem management, and more than 20 mission-critical applications around the clock.

"This started when we first exposed ourselves to the Web," Brune says. Allstate uses Computer Associates' TNG network and systems management to ensure the availability and performance of about 20 of its critical applications. Brune says she uses Unicenter to monitor the applications involved throughout a transaction. "When you're watching all of the pieces and the parts of an application, your mean time to repair goes down, and you get a very clear way to get systems back up and running," she says. "It's just a better way to run your business."

Brune hopes this type of vigilance will help the company do a better job of managing its Web services as they're rolled out. "Whether anyone believes it or not, Web services aren't as easy as they're sometimes made to sound," Brune says. "But they're easier than the old point-to-point solutions."

INDUSTRY LEADERS Rank Company Revenue in millions Income (loss)
in millions IT
employees 13 HIP Health Plan of NY $2,899 $178 242 25 Aetna Inc. $19,879 ($2,523) 2,450 42 Ohio Casualty Group $1,703 ($1) 333 45 Anthem Inc. $13,282 $549 2,335 50 Cincinnati Financial Corp. $2,843 $238 450 60 Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America $7,192 ($283) 525 72 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts $4,043 $99 162 80 Principal Financial Group $8,823 $142 2,117 91 Progressive Corp. $9,294 $667 2,520 121 Cigna Corp. $19,348 ($398) 3,600 138 Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. $15,907 $1,000 3,300 152 American Family Insurance Group $5,307 $58 1,025 161 Northwestern Mutual $16,024 $158 1,050 173 Farmers Group Inc. $2,766 $683 1,300 186 Humana Inc. $11,261 $143 1,226 194 Tufts Associated Health Plans Inc. $2,000 -- 240 215 Aflac $10,257 $821 409 221 Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina $2,903 $76 525 226 Allstate Insurance Co. $29,583 $1,134 3,641 231 Antares Management Solutions -- -- 470 240 Minnesota Life Insurance Co. $1,700 $4 442 245 Nationwide $12,858 -- 3,795 253 Allmerica Financial $3,317 ($306) 490 281 Health Alliance Plan $1,100 -- 139 285 The MONY Group Inc. $2,095 ($23) 258 288 Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of NJ $4,098 -- 324 290 New York Life Insurance Co. $13,702 $1,016 1,350 291 Highmark $7,423 ($83) 1,700 332 Capital BlueCross $1,253 ($35) 290 340 Pacific Life Insurance Co. $3,816 $215 450 369 Transatlantic Holdings Inc. $2,616 $169 27 394 Empire BlueCross BlueShield $4,628 $377 275 411 Jefferson-Pilot Financial $3,480 $475 350 412 Chubb & Son Inc. $9,140 $223 1,620 416 Oxford Health Plans Inc. $4,963 $222 406 422 American United Life Insurance $1,183 $9 240 425 Converium $3,406 $107 287 435 PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. $11,157 $141 289 499 Highmark Life & Casualty Group -- -- -- Financial data is from public sources and company supplied.
Revenue is for latest fiscal year.
Employee data is from InformationWeek 500 qualifying survey.

SNAPSHOT INSIDE COMPANIES Average portion of revenue spent on IT 3% Average percentage of industry applications and business processes that have Web-based front ends 41% Companies with real-time business processes in place 68% HOW COMPANIES DIVIDE THEIR IT BUDGETS Hardware purchases 16% Services or outsourcing 15% Research and development 3% Salaries and benefits 34% Applications 21% Everything else 11% INDUSTRY FINANCIALS Average year-over-year revenue change 4% Average year-over-year net income change -49% DATA: INFORMATIONWEEK RESEARCH
See year-over-year shifts in business-technology practices for this industry. Compare and contrast this year's data with last year's.

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