These companies, Mr. Rao said, are now trying to catch up to competitors that took advantage of opportunities to gain market share through leveraging technology.

Mr. Rao said he expects commercial insurers to focus on, among other areas, redefining their business models. He described this as finding new ways to identify low-touch, medium-touch, and high-touch risks.

Low-touch risks, he said, involve a greater degree of automatic underwriting with little to no human involvement in the process as long as certain business rules are followed. Medium and high-touch risks require more human involvement.

Previously, Mr. Rao said, insurers' business models involved categorizing low, medium and high-touch risks by products lines.

Now, he said, technology allows insurers to drill down within product lines and separate out low, medium and high-touch risks based on underlying factors of individual risks.

Mr. Rao said he expects to see more product agility as well. On small and medium-sized risks, he said, insurers have traditionally offered customized individual products on an as-needed basis.

Now, he said, insurers will look at bundling and standardizing products to sell to multiple small and medium-sized insureds.

Insurers will also look at "distribution value management," Mr. Rao said. He defined this as technology advancements that allow insurers to drill down to the ZIP code level to get a better understanding of market saturation and competition in a given area.

Insurers, he said, will be able to compare and evaluate their presence in ZIP codes to help make decisions on where they should focus expansion efforts.

Mr. Rao said insurers have also explored advanced analytics and business intelligence. Rather than the traditional methods of looking at past occurrences to price and evaluate risks, he said insurers are now able to model how pricing decisions they make will impact the market going forward.

He also said insurers are seeking to achieve greater straight-through processing, particularly for low-touch risks.

While technology advancements have made all of these techniques possible, Mr. Rao said the financial crisis has created a greater impetus for insurers to adopt them.

He explained these standardizing techniques are seen more for small and medium-sized commercial risks because the large risks tend to require more tailored solutions for each customer and client, allowing for less standardization.

Mr. Rao said he is seeing tangible results for companies adopting these techniques, with companies ahead of the curve gaining market share over some of their more traditional competitors.