Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Banks Enter Insurance Business Via Portals

March 5, 2001 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Banks have begun moving into the insurance field by using Web portals to offer cobranded products from partners in the insurance industry, a new report says.
"They've already built out the infrastructure," said Dave Potterton, an analyst at Newton, Mass.-based Meridien Research Inc. and author of the report. "So as they start to broaden the number of offerings that they provide, insurance is a logical choice."
The target for these insurance services are small-business customers, many of whom have traditionally been underserved by banks and insurers.
The benefits to banks are twofold, Potterton said. "It's an extra revenue stream," he said. "But in a lot of ways, banks look at it as a defensive step so that small businesses don't go to an agent or insurance company directly. It's a way to keep the small business segment focused on that [bank]."
One bank site up and running is Wells Fargo & Co.'s Small Business Insurance product. It lets small businesses buy bank-branded business owners', workers' compensation, commercial auto and umbrella liability coverage provided by InsureZone Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas.
Getting the Web-based insurance product integrated with the bank's Web site didn't pose any difficulties, said David Faranske, senior vice president of Wells Fargo Insurance.
From start to finish it took 90 days," he said. "That was a little shorter than we would recommend, but we got it done."
He said the bank will share revenue with InsureZone, but he wouldn't comment on the financial details or on how much it cost to get the site up.
"But there's always some up-front costs with QA and testing that we incur," he said.
InsureZone is also providing small-business insurance for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., due to go live later this month, and deals with two more major banks are pending, said company CEO Rusty Reid.
Other insurance companies that are waking up to the possibilities inherent in this new sales channel include direct insurance broker ePolicy.com Inc. in Torrance, Calif. Epolicy.com is already developing a site for Digital Insight Corp. in Calabasas, Calif., which provides Internet banking services to more than 1,100 banks.
EPolicy decided not to market through an insurance aggregator, which would enable customers to compare prices among a dozen or so brokers such as ePolicy.



Jump to comments

Financial

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Forrester Consulting - Optimizing Users and Applications in a Mobile World
Learn how to successfully deploy a WAN optimization solution that is specifically tuned for a mobile environment!  

Faster, Cheaper and Easier to Maintain
Can you afford not to upgrade your servers to today's advanced, energy-efficient technologies?  

Effectively Implementing Datacenter Automation
Effectively select and deploy the best datacenter automation solution today!

Aligning IT to Business: The Rising Importance of Application Delivery Networks
Application Delivery Networking (ADN) will play a vital role in helping enterprises incorporate strategic technologies to achieve business initiatives.

Mitigate Risk, Lower Costs and Improve Network Efficiency
Create a stable IP network that not only meets today's challenges, but is flexible enough to also meet future demands.