Data–specifically customer information–is the lifeblood of the insurance enterprise. Not surprisingly, then, ownership and stewardship of that data is a subject on which many in the industry disagree.
Having heard the arguments over the years, we decided to ask two key questions of an agent and then a carrier's CIO. First, who actually owns the customer data? Second, with whom should that data reside?
"Customers own the data," states Jerry Fox, vice president at James M. King & Associates, Inc., an agency based in Bloomington, Minn. "It's their information, just as in every other HIPAA system. They allow us access to it, but it is their information. In some cases, the agency and the carrier both store copies of that data, but it still is [the customers'], and we are responsible to protect it."
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