The CIO's Finance Summit and Insurance Summit were recently held in Atlanta, GA and Cisco was a main sponsor at both events. The CIO Finance Summit provided a great opportunity for executives to have in-depth discussions on the best practices and strategies necessary to build customer-centric organizations. The CIO Insurance Summit brought together C-level executives from the property and casualty, life and annuity, and health segments, along with innovative solution providers and analysts from the insurance industry to discuss the critical technology issues affecting insurance organizations.

Major themes discussed at the CIO Finance Summit:

Channel Integration: Bridging the Business -IT Gap: Many banks are now addressing the gaps between business and IT as they move forward with channel integration and an omnichannel strategy. Marvin Cortez, Cisco Banking Practice Advisor discussed the criticality of building an appropriate business with IT roadmap that supported these initiatives and how Cisco is working with retail banks.

Customer Centricity and Interaction -What Will it Look Like in 5 Years? Meaningful client relationships are fundamental to retaining and attracting consumer and commercial customers. Customer preferences and increasing tech sophistication are causing distribution channels to evolve. Al Slamecka, Cisco Banking Practice Advisor, outlined the evolution of customer interaction and addressed the challenges and opportunities banks are now faced with to create the optimal client experience.

Major themes from the CIO Insurance Summit:

As consumers become more educated and savvy about their insurance choices, carriers are addressing the need for greater customer centricity holistically with better insight, optimized processes, and enhanced customer reach through direct and indirect channels.

Bridging the Gap, Today and Tomorrow! This session focused on how business and technology gaps are creating both challenges and opportunities. Cisco's Rob Cornwell, Insurance Practice Manager, and Don Canning, Financial Services Practice Partner Manager, addressed how insurance industry trends are impacting lines of business and the resulting impact on IT strategy across Data Center, Networking, Collaboration and Security as we move toward the Internet of Everything.

IoE for Insurance Roundtable: In this lively exchange, roundtable participants discussed how the Internet of Everything is affecting the Insurance industry. Cisco's Insurance Practice Advisor, Jeff Tumpowsky, opened with the observation of how the industry is seeing new data sources and how this data is driving new products, intelligent processes, tailored communications and new insights around risk. He explained where opportunities lie, first mover advantages, and what value is at stake for insurers doing nothing.

These two summits provided an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas, share successes and paint a vision of where the banking and insurance industries are evolving to as they address customer centricity, omnichannel sales and service and creating new business models. If you attended, let us know your feedback from the event in the comments section below.  And if you could not make the event, please join the conversation.