By Life Quotes, Inc. Staff

Everything these days is shaped and changed by the ever-increasing influx of new technologies, and not even the life insurance industry is immune to those changes.

A new study from Gartner Research says that there are 10 new technologies making a big impact on how life insurance companies do business, from the way they interact with customers to the way they research potential policyholders.

Much of the change has to do with software, the report said, with companies not only adding programs to make transactions with customers run more smoothly and quickly, but also to make processing information from both customers and employees more efficient.

But one change that may surprise some consumers is that life insurance companies are now monitoring social networking sites to find out if any of their policyholders are engaging in dangerous behavior that might affect their coverage. The study also said that companies will soon begin using social networking as a way to be more interactive with their customers, and to market their products.

LIMRA recently announced that life insurance sales rose 10 percent in the first quarter of 2010, so more customers will have to be aware of the changes to the industry.

This article was originally published by Life Quotes, Inc.