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Independent insurance agents no longer enjoy the luxury of a free-wheeling economy and a reliance upon "traditional" business methods. Increasing competition, a widespread economic slowdown and a continuing metamorphosis of the consumer market have combined to create a new challenge for the insurance industry. That challenge is the creation and implementation of new, more responsive competitive strategies.
The insurance industry's mandate for a workable response to this new environment is found throughout the literature (Anson and Cash 1990; Bender 1986; and Kastrud 1990). Unfortunately, this "call-to-arms" has spawned as many, if not more, questions than it has generated meaningful recommendations. One such question, and the topic of this discussion, concerns the role of competitive intelligence as an integral component of the independent agent's strategic planning activity. Specific objectives and benefits to the independent agent include the following three items:
* Examining strategic intelligence systems and their potential contribution to the independent agent's strategic planning activities
* Exploring competitive intelligence as a vital element of the strategic planning process
* Providing actionable guidelines for the development and implementation of a competitive intelligence system
STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS
Once to be limited to large corporate entities, strategic planning is rapidly becoming a standard managerial planning tool in all types and sizes of organizations. Further, while strategic planning's contributions to organizational change and performance have been substantial, it is widely recognized that the vision and opportunities afforded by effective strategic planning would be even greater if users possessed a clearer understanding of strategic intelligence.
Strategic intelligence is the insight gleaned from a process that specifies, gathers, and analyzes the information needed for strategic planning. The information collected should reflect past, present, and future conditions in the external environment, which consists of six elements: technology, demographics, economics, regulation, social conditions, and competition.
For example, a cursory perusal of information available from trade sources (such as Best's Review, Life and Health Insurance Edition) would readily identify several relevant demographic trends (for example, an aging population, ethnic shifts, family composition, and so on). Similarly, a current social trend is the growing popularity of retirement and/or estate planning. This socioeconomic movement has lead to the development of new, more versatile insurance products targeted toward these markets. Another first-rate source of demographic data...