Karen is a Senior Analyst in Celent's North American insurance practice. She brings a broad range of insurance and consulting experience to her work; she has worked as a management consultant to and within insurance carriers and other financial services companies for over 20 years. Karen’s focus is life insurance technology and trends. Her research concentrates on life, all aspects of life insurance processing including illustrations, eApplications and eSignature, new business and underwriting systems, policy administration systems, claims systems, and digital enablement technologies. She has been the author of four Celent Model Insurer reports and the co-author of one. Past consulting projects include a vendor product strategy review, life claims system benchmarking project, a marketing and distribution management systems review, an eApplication cost analysis, plus several small life insurance technology analyses. In addition to her analyst duties, Karen leads Celent’s Knowledge Management team which leads our largest research initiatives, particularly our ABCD Vendor assessments across all practices. Karen’s research has been featured in Insurance & Technology, Insurance Networking News, ITA/Pro and Technology Decisions. Karen began her career as a Financial Management Program Trainee for General Electric. Her past experience includes Coopers & Lybrand’s Financial Services management consulting group, John Hancock’s internal consulting division, and TowerGroup’s Consulting Services Group. Prior to joining Celent, Ms Monks was a financial analyst for a small Richmond, VA financial valuation firm. Karen is based in Richmond, VA.