Insurance Marketing Information from Canada
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Competitive Intelligence --identifying a key advantage for capturing Canadian insurance market share The Canadian insurance market place has become an ever increasingly competitive market. Any competitive advantage that a company can find over that of its peers to capture every valuable premium dollar must be capitalized on by that company. Not only must the company capitalize on the advantage, they must do so in a timely fashion or risk losing the opportunity to improve their business. The gathering of competitive intelligence is not espionage nor is it illegal. Competitive intelligence is simply the compiling or gathering of public information on peer companies and the performing of a detailed analysis on that information. This analysis then becomes the basis of an insurance company's direction for product and marketing initiatives. By knowing what a company's peer competitors are doing, or have done, a company can make educated decisions based on factual information. All of this is done in an effort to capture as much of the market share as possible. It is important that the competitive intelligence gathered and especially distributed is not slanderous. Ethically a company can only state the facts and their analysis based on those facts. Competitive intelligence in its most rudimentary state is the differences between companies and their products as defined by factual information. Within any insurance product line, whether Life or Property & Casualty, there are a number of obvious similarities between the product offerings of various insurance carriers. However it is the not so obvious differences that can give a company a key competitive advantage over the same group of insurance carriers. One example might be the differences between various companies' bonuses on Universal Life products. Some as we know are conditional and others are unconditional whereby the bonus is guaranteed. The ability to illustrate and more importantly promote that competitive advantage over another company can be instrumental in capturing the premium dollars and ultimately market share in competitive situations. The home office Product development teams have a range of competitive intelligence needs. The actuaries are interested in the pricing differences between competing products. The illustration development team are interested in the format and functionality differences. Product managers have perhaps the broadest range of competitive intelligence needs. They are interested in differences between product features, product limitations, pricing and marketing initiatives. Beyond the boundaries of the home office, there is yet another audience in need of competitive intelligence. This audience is the sales force. These people are the front line for the insurance carrier. In fact the sales forces' competitive intelligence needs are more immediate and require a timely response. Their needs are not as broad as those of the home office product development teams. The sales force is looking for assistance in locating specific differences between specific companies and specific products to identify competitive advantages that will close their sale. The application of competitive intelligence to a business' decision-making process, whether at the macro or micro level, can identify key competitive advantages over their peer group of companies. Competitive intelligence is only as good as the source in which the information originated. Good reliable information can positively influence the business and business decisions, just as bad unreliable information can negatively influence the same business and business decisions. Therefore it becomes the curator's or Competitive Intelligence Specialist's responsibility or better yet 'duty' to evaluate the information before it is elevated to the decision making level. Every person within a company, whether at the home office level or the field office level, is a Competitive Intelligence Specialist. These same people have their own competitive intelligence needs and their own sources of information. But are these sources reliable? Perhaps 'Yes'. Perhaps 'No'. What is the determining factor that will define the competitive intelligence source as being reliable or not? Ultimately the state of the business will determine the reliability. Good information (if applied correctly) will lead to good business decisions; good business decisions will lead to good sales results; good sales results will lead to good returns on investment. Obviously the opposite can also be true. Any solution that a company implements into their infrastructure must centralize the competitive intelligence needs of all of their employees. Each individual must be able to identify or realize specific added value to his or her day-to-day competitive needs that can be delivered in a timely fashion. One such solution is a knowledge portal strategy. A knowledge portal, like the metaZone from metaLogic Consulting Inc., will become the central repository for all the competitive intelligence that flows through a company on a daily basis. The competitive intelligence specialists would become the curators or administrators of the knowledge portal. By surveying the various sources used by each of the individuals that have a need for competitive intelligence and access to the knowledge portal, the Competitive Intelligence Specialists will be able to determine the reliability of each of the sources and decide whether or not to include information from each source. Knowledge portals can be designed to be more than just a repository of competitive intelligence information. In fact, knowledge portals can take the raw data entered and provide analysis. More importantly this analysis will be distributed to all of the users who have access to the knowledge portal instantaneously. Beyond the importance of distribution and dissemination of the information stored within the knowledge portal, the site must be secured. The knowledge portal must be able to accept or deny users access to the information. Third parties are also a good source for information. In a recent partnership between metaLogic Consulting Inc. and Blease Research. The metaZone will offer a pre-populated Competitive Intelligence knowledge portal by leveraging Blease Research's Full Disclosure product. Full Disclosure is the only independent source of policy information across all major cash value types, covering universal, whole, variable and survivorship life products from over 65 top life insurance companies across North America. If insurance carriers within the Canadian insurance market are serious about becoming one of the top providers within that market, they must aggressively pursue Competitive Intelligence. Keith Wu 
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