EA Modeling - Insurance
In a previous post, I discussed the reasons that I hear from customers in the banking industry for performing enterprise architecture and related that, perhaps surprisingly, they seem to be the most generic sector. In this post, I’ll be taking a brief look at the USA insurance industry, discussing how it compares to the banking industry in its approach toward enterprise architecture.
The largest surprise I find is how there is a greater focus on regulation compliance – i.e. which business services are affected by which regulations and consequently, which data items and which applications are also impacted. This may be because, within the USA, historically most insurance regulation has been at the state level, whereas banking regulation has been more at the federal level – but this is just my speculation. Maybe there’s a master’s thesis in that question somewhere.
There is also one additional wrinkle when dealing with insurers, and that comes when insurance companies double up as healthcare insurers. These organizations have an even greater focus on regulatory compliance because they also process health information. In some cases it can get even more complex, where you have non-profit healthcare providers who are consequently subject to yet another layer of regulation – a perfect storm of obligations.
So, while the ‘standard’ goals of road mapping, rationalization, capability mapping and so on are all aspects of EA practice that insurance companies incorporate, there is also a surprising level of focus on regulatory compliance – especially in comparison to banks and other financial organizations, who on the surface you might have expected to have a similar level of focus.
Having mentioned healthcare, I’ll talk more about modeling motivations of healthcare providers and healthcare insurers in the final post in this series.
Read the final post in this series here.