Novarica in the Press
Novarica’s principals are frequently quoted in industry publications. If you are a reporter seeking access to a Novarica study or comment from a Novarica expert, please email media@novarica.com or call 212.419.2520.
Recent quotes from Novarica are listed below:
| Publication | Subject | Date | Person |
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Social Networking: From Fad to Factor With viable business networking tools readily available, the question then becomes where best to deploy them. "Carriers are using the tools in two ways: for carriers to communicate with agents and for agents to communicate among themselves," Carnahan says. |
Feb 10 | Karlyn Carnahan |
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"Renewal" Team Shakes Up UBS Management “I think they’re making the organization as lean and efficient as possible so it has more credibility as a standalone organization.” |
Feb 10 | Robert Ellis |
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Cetera Hires Top RIA Recruiting Executive From Schwab “The world doesn’t need another ‘me-too’ broker-dealer. The question is how are they going to differentiate the brand?" |
Feb 10 | Robert Ellis |
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What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate "With the quantum leaps in communication technology over the last 10 years, the failure to communicate effectively has become a mortal sin, whether you're talking about communication within an organization or between an organization and its partners or customers." |
Feb 10 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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2010: A PAS Odyssey "A handful of larger vendors have modernized or are in the process of modernizing their solutions, and even some smaller vendors that have been dormant from a sales perspective for a while have done so, too. And with the new vendors entering the market and existing modern solutions rapidly finding strong market acceptance, modernizing isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity." |
Jan 10 | Chad Hersh |
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Revolving door at Fidelity takes another turn "Here you are at Schwab, and you've grown a small unit into being one of the biggest, most profitable parts of their business," Mr. Ellis said. "You're recruited to No. 2 Fidelity, who says: 'Get out there and convince [advisers] Fidelity's the new Schwab.' Then the rug gets pulled out from under you." |
Jan 10 | Robert Ellis |
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Back to Basics for IT Budgets Matthew Josefowicz, director of Novarica and head of the insurance practice, tells INN that despite a good deal of buzz around newer trends such as cloud computing, insurers are focusing on improving technology that aids in product roll out, pricing and improving interaction with their distribution channels. |
Jan 10 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Turn the Page: New Year Brings Hope for Economic Recovery "What we have here is a class of providers that believe the market is ready for a different and possibly more efficient service method, but those providers aren’t going to offer it because of a fear of cannibalizing their current business. Long term that is going to change, and I think a lot of people are trying to lay the groundwork for that change without specifically saying they are preparing for it.” |
Jan 10 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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FINRA Cautions Advisors About Social Media "If I'm a broker and go on Facebook while I'm at home, does the firm have obligations to monitor and retain the information from that activity?" says Bob Ellis, principal of wealth management research at Novarica, a research and advisory firm. |
Jan 10 | Robert Ellis |
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Hoping That Bigger Really Means Better "We have BlackRock being almost a General Motors, covering every need--every investing style and asset-management product. Can they pull it off?" says Robert J. Ellis, a principal at the New York wealth-management research firm Novarica, a division of Novantas. |
Jan 10 | Robert Ellis |
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Software M&A Accelerates "Insurers should make sure they understand in what category their ISV providers are located, and who is likely to buy them or why. For example, acquisitions of a Rising Star or a Good Tech, Small Company provider are likely to result in increased investment in the product, while acquisitions of stagnating product providers are likely to results in forced conversions or migrations. Insurers should also protect themselves as much as possible through contractual means, including demanding base code escrow and service-level guarantees that survive change of control." |
Jan 10 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Slowdown in Advisor Movement Continues, Could Last Bob Ellis, wealth management principal at Novarica, says that after a remarkably volatile period of mergers and job-swapping, the industry-old game of musical chairs has likely ended for a few years. |
Dec 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Scottrade gins up custody marketing to RIAs Independent advisers, of course, seek much more than cheap pricing from their custodians. “They need all the hand-holding they can get,” said Robert Ellis, head of securities industry research at Novarica. |
Dec 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Fidelity is bidding its HybridOne brand farewell “Marketing only gets you so far,” Ellis says. “Sooner or later, customers will look at the product and say: this is not what’s promised.” |
Dec 09 | Robert Ellis |
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IT Changes Everything "As information technology has advanced, few companies have really taken the opportunity to think about the implications of those advances, and question their business practices." |
Dec 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Ameriprise Financial clamps down on franchisees with new rules The emphasis on creating a strong employee-based system while de-emphasizing franchisees is sensible, according to Robert Ellis, senior analyst of the securities industry for New York-based Novarica. |
Dec 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Sword Group acquires AgencyPort Commenting on the impact on the property & casualty market, Matthew Josefowicz, head of the insurance practice at Novarica stated, "Bringing together AgencyPort's strong front-end solutions and loyal client base with Sword's core processing and CRM capabilities creates a very interesting option for US P&C insurers.” |
Nov 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Who Do You Trust? “The first potential for abuse is when law firms write themselves into the trust agreement as corporate trustee. At this point in time, is the law firm taking care of the client's best interests, or their own?” |
Nov 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Is Legacy a Bad Word? The big problem is not with legacy platforms, notes Matthew Josefowicz, director, insurance at New York-based Novarica. The issue is with legacy applications that are poorly documented, incompletely understood by the people responsible for maintaining them, and unable to provide new functionality. |
Nov 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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BROKER'S WORLD: UBS' McCann Gives Glimpse Of Brokerage Plans "If you are going to change the margin, there is only one way to do that and that's to change the model," said Bob Ellis, principal in the wealth management practice at consulting firm Novarica. He said lowering commissions or moving to a fee-based model would boost profits. |
Nov 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Back on the Front Lines “Production at these firms has gone to hell because of the market," Ellis says. By making the managers become producers, they can cut base salaries to the $150,000 to $200,000 range, he adds. |
Nov 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Insurers Plot Familiar Priorities in the Year Ahead “Smaller P&C insurers are investing aggressively to compete, larger ones are trying to refine and streamline operations to hold their positions, and life/annuity/health insurers are either struggling for breath or else preparing themselves for a comeback. In all cases, it will be an interesting, and for many companies, a potentially transformative, 2010.” |
Nov 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Insurance CIOs Speak Out “Comparatively, the power of the on-demand model has a lot of appeal, especially when you are doing multi-year loss runs," [Josefowicz] said. "You can ship data out and get it back. Larger cloud Web 2.0--where you ship some here and some there--is not being embraced by insurance companies, and I don't expect it to be.” |
Oct 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Citi's Wealth Plan: An Impossible Dream? “This seems like one more aspirational move executives make without talking to advisors," says Bob Ellis, principal and leader of wealth management research at Novarica. "It's a great strategy on paper, but it could end up killing their business.” |
Oct 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Improving Business/IT Communication “Techno-speak is not impressive. IT needs to explain themselves in simple terms that focus on business impact and user experience, not technology.” |
Oct 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Xerox to Buy ACS “Although Xerox has a lot of document output expertise, they haven't had much success in crafting a meaningful message about their capabilities for insurers," Josefowicz tells INN. "Perhaps they'll be able to leverage some of ACS' expertise in insurance workflows to expand their position in the industry.” |
Sep 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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STREET MOVES: MSBB Team Leaves to Set Up Independent Shop Bob Ellis, principal at research firm Novarica, says broker moves now still reflect the "fallout from the economic crisis" and financial meltdown. Leaving a wirehouse to become independent isn't a quick process, as brokers must settle licensing and compliance issues as well as find office space. |
Aug 09 | Robert Ellis |
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Insurers to Increase Spending “Fewer insurers are focused specifically on dealing with the economic crisis than in previous polls," says Matthew Josefowicz, director of the insurance practice at Novarica and lead author of the report, US Insurers IT Budgets and Projects for 2009-2010. "Except for firms that suffered heavy direct losses, most insurers are more optimistic as they plan for 2010, especially midsize property/casualty firms.” |
Aug 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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8 Characteristics of Highly Effective Vendors “Insurers must be careful to look beyond feature/function mixes and technology stacks and to carefully consider their potential vendors' track records in getting clients live, delivering measurable business results and enhancing their products to keep them current.” |
Aug 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Novarica Report Shows Value Of Agent Portals “Convenience, relationship, responsiveness, and speed are the areas most likely to make a carrier the agents' top choice," says Karlyn Carnahan, CPCU, a principal in Novarica's insurance practice who led the research project along with analyst Tse Wei Lim. "While an underwriter relationship may make the difference in whether a carrier is number one or number three for an agent, other factors also are highly correlated with the 'top carrier' position.” |
Aug 09 | Karlyn Carnahan |
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Carriers Wise to Rethink the Merits of Conversion “While you may not need to consolidate and convert every single system, leveraging a third party's tools, capabilities and bench strength may make it much more realistic to retire more systems than you thought possible and jumpstart the ROI for a consolidation project.” |
Jul 09 | Chad Hersh |
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10 Steps Toward Better Communication Between IT and Business One of the problems, Josefowicz noted, is that business is trained to under-promise and over-deliver, while technology is trained to be realistic about goals and objectives. |
Jun 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Improving Processes to Aid Speed to Market “Insurers should make more formal efforts to quantify the financial impact of time to market. While it is already a general priority, each individual technology investment and organizational change required to improve time to market can be significant, and the lack of a quantified business case that includes time-to-market elements can delay investments.” |
Jun 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Technology and the Science of Customer Retention “As the insurance market continues to contract and becomes ever more competitive, carriers are discovering that retaining profitable customers has become even more important than acquiring new ones. New customers have high acquisition expense, high initial cost of service and lower persistency, all of which result in lower profits than serving and retaining existing customers.” |
May 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Insurers Seek Fewer, Deeper Partnerships With Technology Vendors Some companies are postponing strategic projects while others are aggressively moving forward, but all are responding to the changed market conditions, believes Matt Josefowicz, director of Novarica's insurance practice. "Whether that means pressuring vendors on pricing or insisting on different deal structures, there's definitely a great deal of activity going on with regard to restructuring existing relationships and even entering into new ones," Josefowicz says. "Carriers are approaching these negotiations with a little more discipline and realism than they had been recently.” |
Apr 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Here Comes That Rainy Day Even with economic turmoil, Josefowicz asserts there will be more activity rather than less in the vendor market. Such activity may be derived from "some small companies that have their pipeline disrupted or may be looking for safety in numbers and to become part of a larger organization that has more resources." |
Apr 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Agility Vital in Insurance IT “As with most things in this information-based industry, improvements in IT capabilities are critical to enhancing agility. More agile IT groups make more agile business practices possible. IT plays a critical role in fostering innovation by scouting new technology capabilities and enabling pilot projects, although properly structured organizational incentives are the limiting factor for most insurers when it comes to driving innovation." |
Mar 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Researchers: Why Use Aggregators? Among the many reasons--new business, volume, data, fill out media mix--Hersh highlighted for using aggregators, brand control may perhaps be the most important. "If you reject an applicant through an aggregator, they may never see your company name," he said, implying that the applicant won't gain a negative perception of the insurer. |
Feb 09 | Chad Hersh |
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Core System Conundrum “Aside from life insurers with large investment losses, few carriers are delaying or canceling core systems replacements. In fact, the market for policy admin systems in 2008-2009 has shown virtually no net slowdown from 2007 to 2008, which was the strongest year on record for core systems sales. In an industry with a history of cutting IT in lockstep with a down market, what's different this time? The answer falls into three categories: differences in attitudes toward IT, differences in the available core systems solutions and differences in the competitive landscape." |
Feb 09 | Chad Hersh |
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Insurers Challenged to Adopt Business Intelligence “While the accessibility of external data and analytic capabilities are increasing rapidly, insurers' internal data quality is increasing much more slowly on average. Insurers need to continue to invest in business intelligence in order to close this gap.” |
Jan 09 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Reckoning for Reinsurers After the Financial Storm "In an increasingly complex, interlocked and fast-moving world, where should a reinsurer best deploy capital in their IT investments? Like primary insurers, reinsurers are experiencing what Novarica terms the 'frostbite effect' in IT strategy. Reinsurers are pulling in from the edges to protect their core capabilities to remain viable and competitive in a challenging market. These core areas are data and modeling, compliance and control, and operational efficiencies." |
Jan 09 | Karlyn Carnahan |
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The Near-Future of Personal Auto Insurance “The most impactful changes are more likely to be those that are the most basic: improvements to policy, billing, underwriting, and claims systems and capabilities. Given the current states of the economy and insurance market, which is, in turn, leading carriers to push for improved ratios, retention, fewer capital outlays, etc., make no mistake that a big piece of the future for insurers will be improving the fundamentals, which will include these core systems. Perhaps the most visible changes will require some behind-the-scenes changes first." |
Dec 08 | Chad Hersh |
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CIOs Stress Prioritization in 2009 "With many insurers basing their IT budgets on a percentage of written premiums, if premiums decline, so do budgets," explains Chad Hersh, an Austin, Texas-based principal with Novarica. "But this is offset by a couple of factors, such as the moderate hardening--or at least flattening--of P&C rates expected in 2009 and the fact that many carriers specifically allocate dollars to strategic IT projects outside the IT budget.” |
Dec 08 | Chad Hersh |
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Technology and Your Insurance Practice: Common Offerings to Advance Your Business “Technology has expanded the toolset that life/annuity agents and brokers have at their disposal. Insurance carrier tools are becoming more sophisticated, inexpensive Web technology is changing the way agents can communicate with prospects and clients, and the software-as-a-service (SaaS) wave has brought many previously expensive capabilities within the reach of even the smallest agencies.” |
Dec 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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ISOTech Panel Gauges IT/Business Relationship Woes Novarica's Matthew Josefowicz, director, insurance core team, also struck a note of optimism for the IT/business relationship, arguing that surveys demonstrate the two sides are increasingly coming together to solve problems. It is natural, if not inevitable that they do so, he suggested, because "insurance is an information business: insurance companies communicate and analyze information, and executives are realizing this.” |
Nov 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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IT Will Power Insurance Industry Response to Crisis While the life and annuities business may be harder hit than the P&C sector--owing to diminished consumer confidence in financial services industries--life insurers still badly need strategic IT capabilities that are, if anything, more important under current conditions, according to Novarica's Josefowicz. "With the marketplace in flux, competitive position becomes even more important, and insurers need IT improvements in order to compete in speed to market and service levels.” |
Nov 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Vendor Acquisitions Could Reshape Insurance Technology Space Despite these difficulties, life insurers still badly need strategic IT capabilities that, if anything, more important under current conditions, according to Matthew Josefowicz, New York-based Novarica's practice leader. "With the marketplace in flux, competitive position becomes even more important, and insurers need IT improvements in order to compete in speed-to-market and service levels.” |
Oct 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Will Online Access to Medical Records Reduce Health Premiums? “[Online access] would definitely make the value chain more efficient in health insurance,” states Matthew Josefowicz, director, insurance, at New York-based Novarica, an industry consulting firm. “Whether it would lower premiums is another question, since it wouldn’t necessarily address the cost of care. But it might improve margins." |
Jul 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Vendor Acquisitions Could Reshape Insurance Technology Space Josefowicz foresees the Oracle move precipitating further deals, possibly soon. "Some larger players that weren't interested in the application space are now going to look at what Oracle did and get interested," he predicts. "Also, there has been significant private equity interest in this market for a while, and with Oracle getting more acquisitive, that's the thing that will get attention from more private equity investors as well.” |
May 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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All for One and One for All “Compliance with ACORD standards can be a deal killer if the solution provider is not ready to support those models,” reports Josefowicz. “In a lot of cases, people are not careful about what that means,” he says. “If you ask a vendor whether it supports ACORD, you have to ask the second-level questions: Which processes? What models? What messaging types? Are you using the process models or just the messaging standards? You can have 10 vendors saying they are ACORD compliant, and they all mean different things.” |
May 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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The Insurance Technology Indecision Cycle While one should expect solutions to complex operational and data management problems to be a significant undertaking, the return on investment (ROI) of IT projects is often eroded unnecessarily by poor project management, [Josefowicz] says. "That poor project management starts before the project does--in the decision cycle."" |
May 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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The Matt & Chad Show: Act One The big boys of the research and consulting trade, you see, prefer what Josefowicz called a "consistent product offering," as it fits more tightly across the research behemoths’ industry practices. Yet that may not always be the best way to serve any one individual industry, he said. |
Apr 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Safeco may be the first of many insurance deals "Although property/casualty insurers had their second strong year in 2007 in terms of underwriting results, achieving top-line growth has been elusive. We expect to see more acquisitions by growth-hungry insurers in 2008,” said Matthew Josefowicz, director of the insurance practice at research and advisory firm Novarica. |
Apr 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Legacy and Mainframe Migration: Finally the Rule Rather Than the Exception “Many technologies are converging to finally make migrating from legacy systems hardware realistic and cost-effective. Though past promises proved empty, an array of real technologies has emerged to make migrating away from legacy systems a viable, attractive option.” |
Apr 08 | Chad Hersh |
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Visible Value: How to Create and Communicate Value with SOA “Service-oriented architecture is a critical tool for insurer technology teams. However, the high level of hype threatens to erode support for experimentation and the creation of documentable business value. Insurer CIOs should make sure they track and communicate the value of their tactical SOA investments in order to help their business partners truly understand the value of this technology approach.” |
Mar 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Billing Systems - New Technologies, Opportunities “Insurers need to support multiple channels, new payment methods and more flexible plans that allow different segments and distribution channels to serve their markets effectively,” notes Matthew Josefowicz, director of the insurance practice. “Unfortunately, legacy billing systems are often not up to the job.” |
Mar 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Overstuffed A more tangible issue for a lot of insurers besides data storage and management issues is integrating e-mail into workflow processes and workflow systems that weren't necessarily designed for such activity, [Josefowicz] adds. This relates to tasks such as making sure you can attach an e-mail to a case file just as easily as you could attach a scanned document; making sure you can attach an e-mail to a customer service interaction record the same way you can attach call notes; and making sure customer service requests get treated with the same sense of urgency as a customer service call, according to Josefowicz.” |
Feb 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Novarica Survey Finds P&C Insurance CEOs' Tech Knowledge Wanting “Thinking about technology only in terms of communications capabilities may put commercial and specialty lines writers at risk of failing to use data effectively,” [Josefowicz] cautions. “They are missing the opportunity to capture and move more data electronically, which will make that data more accessible to better analytics, which in turn will be the key to better risk selection and profitability going forward.” |
Feb 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Virtual Universe, Real World Troubles In the end, in the view of Matt Josefowicz, principal of Novarica’s insurance practice, the recent failure of Internet-bearing fiber optic cables, "underscores some of risks of offshore outsourcing and the relative fragility of the global information infrastructure. In a virtual info economy we tend to forget that these signals travel over a physical infrastructure vulnerable to accidents and volatile political situations.” |
Feb 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Document Automation Vendors Emerge As Enterprise Solution Players “Exstream has carved out a very strong position in high-volume, complex document composition in insurance as well as other areas, and this move clearly strengthens HP’s overall position in document creation and output,” Josefowicz says. “This is part of HP's general strategy of moving up the value chain in business technology into applications and value-added areas like business intelligence.” |
Jan 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Novantas Launches Insurance Research, Advisory Service “We are getting away from the subscription model, and have retained an advisory services model in which the agenda is directed by the client,” Josefowicz told INN, “which means the client is under no obligation to purchase research that is not relevant to them.” |
Jan 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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New Sources of Advice Novarica departs from what Josefowicz refers to as the dominant "Gartneresque" advisory model based on research subscription for one based on an annual retainer that gives clients access to the analyst or consultant. |
Jan 08 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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The Comeback InsWeb’s early business model didn’t allow it to "capitalize much of the value it was creating because it would only get paid if consumers purchased insurance through the company," said Josefowicz. "More often than not, consumers would go to their site, get information and then buy insurance offline with an agent or direct carrier.” |
Dec 07 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Financial Services Firms Increasing Spending, But Priorities Differ “Cost take-out is not enough to get projects approved now. Companies are now looking for the creation of some business advantage, and that means the creation of some kind of productivity enhancement or new business capability.” |
Nov 07 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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Make Your Mark Some carriers had the view if you were high touch, technology was less important because you were relying on high-value people to deliver service. However, if those people don’t have the systems and information to support good service, “they’re not delivering value,” Josefowicz adds. “You need to support those people with the analytics, workflow systems, access to data, and other tools to do their jobs most effectively.” |
Nov 07 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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401(k) rule to spark risk-return scramble “Obviously this is not the news that life insurers were hoping for, and the loss of this asset stream could be an issue for insurers who rely heavily on this product class. But perhaps it will spur the industry to expand its pension offerings beyond 401(k)s into other areas that provide the same kinds of predictability benefits to both buyers and sellers.” |
Oct 07 | Matthew Josefowicz |
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CRM Systems: One Size May Not Fit All “Insurers have invested in online self-service and customer data consolidation and analysis, but often outside the bounds of a typical CRM software package.” |
Aug 07 | Matthew Josefowicz |
