The insurance industry is faced with the difficulty of understanding how external data sources can be used as part of their daily operations and complementing their internal data with these sources of information.

The insurance industry is about evaluating risks and buying them at a price that can generate positive margin. The insurance value chain is highly dependent on data, and external data has become more important over the past decade.

This report defines the concept of social media intelligence and provides three case studies on the use of social media intelligence with one specific example of an insurance company. It also provides Celent recommendations on how to apply social media intelligence technology to the insurance value chain.

“The social media intelligence examples described in this report, as well as our attempt to identify social media intelligence applications to insurers, should help them better capture the potential of this approach and the related technology,” says Michellod. “While social media intelligence has been mainly used in sales and marketing, we think it can deliver value in many insurance business areas beside communication and marketing.”