ebizQ's Business Agility Watch

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I recently had the opportunity to have a short conversation with Keith Bexell of Prudential Financial, after we ran this news about their work. If this kind of industry vertical conversation is interesting to you, I recemmend you join us on Wednesday for this panel discussion, called "Visibility, Control and Evolution: Building on SOA to Meet Today's Financial Services Industry Challenges." Sign up for the free event right here.

Below is the full transcript of this podcast:

Announcer: Welcome to another ebizQ podcast.

EB: Hi, this is Elizabeth Book Kratz and this is another ebizQ podcast. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking of with Keith Bexell, who is Vice President of New Business for the Domestic and Individual Life Insurance Business at Prudential Financial. Thanks for being with me today, Keith.

KB: Thank you, Elizabeth. Glad to be here.

EB: Great. So Prudential Financial just for those who might not know, is a financial services leader with approximately $648 billion of assets under management as of last December. Their primary goal is to help the more than 50 million individual and intuitional customers they have grow and protect their wealth. So again, I appreciate your time today. And basically, I understand from a recent Prudential and Skywire Software News Release that two-way messaging is an industry first, something that you've done together and you this is a real-time messaging system that allows agencies to communicate directly with the carrier. Can you give a little background on this and explain what function it serves and why this might be relevant to your clients?

KB: Sure. Elizabeth, in our fast-paced world, we find that prompt and accurate communication between carriers and their broker's general agency partners is vital to an efficient new business process. The introduction of real-time messaging via Skywire's Agency Management System, it'll allow BGA staff to communicate with their carriers without having to leave their primary case management application.

Prudential, like many other carriers, currently, offers real-time messaging from their proprietary website. However, this requires the case management staff at the BGA to jump from one application to another to support their case load. This is inefficient and causes extra work. Putting this functionality into Skywire application, allows them to manage their case communication through a single uniform application, which enhances both the efficiency and quality of the correspondence with carriers.

EB: Wonderful. So here at ebizQ, which in the process of studying, analyzing, and reporting news on enterprise software and middleware, we've been definitely delving more into industry verticals like insurance. It appears that Prudential is building a top notch IT system to respond faster to clients and colleagues needs. So it would be wonderful if you could share some general thoughts about how IT is important in the insurance and finance industries, and if you could share your thoughts on the nature of the insurance industry, and industry specific needs to adequately document events, for example, and to have responsive and reliable integrated tools.

KB: Sure. Now, I believe that the shift from proprietary distribution systems to independent third party distributions systems. And it really has increased the life insurance reliance on technology to remain productive and really to enable and support growth. Today, roughly two-thirds of all Life New Business is written through independent distributors versus traditional career agency systems.

The level and sophistication and technology infrastructure across these independent relationships really varies greatly. And as carrier manufacturers being able to make IT investments that support as many of your distributions relationships as possible, with as much flexibility as possible, is really critical to our success. IT platforms that allow us to link document images, data feeds for case status, for example, commissions, and appointments, as well as real-time communication with our new business platform, are the kind of robust and integrated solutions we're looking to support currently and into the future.

EB: Great. So that kind of gives us a good picture of how you're doing business at Prudential Financial and we appreciate your time today. Keith Bexell, who is Vice President of New Business for the Domestic and Individual Life Insurance Business at Prudential Financial; thank you for your time today. And this has been an ebizQ podcast.

Announcer: You've been listening to a podcast presented by Elizabeth Book Editor in Chief of ebizQ. For comments or questions, please send an e-mail to editor@ebizQ.net or visit Elizabeth's blog at ebizQ.net/blogs.

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