It's safe to say that you won't find any punch-card readers in use at insurance companies anymore, and you'd probably be hard-pressed to even find a typewriter. Those two machines were instrumental to record keeping and data processing at insurers for decades but, ultimately, they made way for a new generation of business technology.
Every technology in place at insurers today will be obsolete some day; however, many companies aren't willing to give up on their legacy systems just yet.
"The truth is, there are many companies that have been chugging along for decades with back-room systems written in RPG or COBOL. You don't talk about it at conferences because it's not 'cool,' but it's the reality of the industry," says Gregory M. Lawler, vice president of information technology at Government Personnel Mutual Life Insurance (GPM Life).
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