A Look Into Europe’s PAS Market

Recent reports indicate that U.S. insurers are increasingly investing in policy administration systems (PAS).

A new Celent report, “Policy Administration Systems for General Insurers in Europe 2011,” indicates that European insurers are doing the same, and have been for the past couple years. According to the report, in the two years from January 2009 to January 2011, more than 130 European insurers licensed a new policy administration system.

And vendors are taking notice. Several have issued a major new release since 2009 that upgraded their technology platform, broadened their range of functionality or did both, Celent says. Vendors have made investments to improve functionality, provide better reporting and analytics and enable their solutions to work in an insurer's service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment, Celent says. Many vendors have also made important advances in usability and personalization—with benefits for new and experienced underwriters and service representatives. System administration capabilities for configuring products, rules, workflow, document management and user interfaces have also improved.

With no single best policy administration solution for all insurers, the report, which profiles 42 PAS vendors in Europe, suggests insurers should begin the process of seeking a new PAS by looking inward at its mix of lines of business, geography, staff capabilities, business objectives and insurers financial resources.

Some vendors are a better fit for an insurer with a large IT group, deeply proficient with the most modern platforms and tools, while other vendors are a better fit for an insurer with a small IT group that wants vendors to maintain and support their applications, the report states. Some systems provide broad and extensive out-of-the-box functionality that matches an insurer’s lines of business and operating model, and other systems offer powerful configuration tools to build capabilities for both known and future requirements.

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