SNL Financial last week announced it had formed an alliance with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to acquire and publish statutory insurance data as part of the information provider's database offerings. SNL currently serves the energy, banking, financial services, insurance, real estate and media and communications industries by providing a wealth of corporate, financial, market and merger and acquisition data.
SNL plans to begin offering the statutory insurance data in early 2008, making it a part of its SNL Unlimited for Financial Institutions information service. This data includes financial and operating data (such as line-of-business results and market share) quarterly for more than 5,000 companies.
With a full slate of offerings to its insurance industry clients already in its portfolio, SNL knew it still could, and should, offer even more. In the information industry, you're never really done—you have to always be on the look-out for new products and services that will integrate smoothly into your current platform and provide customers with a more robust experience. It certainly won't be a surprise if SNL announces similar alliances in the near future that will help bolster other industry offerings. It will be more surprising if it doesn't.