Speaking of Allstate (see Donald's previous posting)....Reported in the Chicago Tribune today, a memo to customer service workers in Allstate stated "We must look for ways to increase our sourcing efforts." Allstate already has a number of existing outsourcing arrangements.This is an example of the trend we identify in our recent reports on Insurance BPO (North America: http://www.celent.com/PressReleases/20081224/BPONA.asp and UK/Europe: http://www.celent.com/PressReleases/20081224/BPOEurope.asp) . We contend that, in this difficult economic environment, insurers who have built the competencies necessary to manage outsourced processes will seek to expand the number of processes that are serviced outside of their company's boundaries. Look for vendor management capabilities to be one of those "soft skills" areas that yield continuing hard dollar benefits to those insurers who invest in them.