Life and health insurers’ e-business budgets remain at roughly 5% to 15% of total IT budgets, with the majority spent on agent-facing systems. E-business has become a critical component of life and health insurers’ way of doing business with agents, prospects and policyholders, in that order. These are just two conclusions Boston-based Celent LLC makes in its report, “Top Ten Trends in L/H Insurance E-Business 2007 and Beyond.”
In 2004, Celent published a report on trends in life/health e-business that contained 10 projections for 2007. In the 2007 report, Celent revisits those projections based on updated survey data. The changes since 2004 have been incremental rather than revolutionary, but the trends in adoption across all areas and importance to the business all go the same way: up.
Agent e-business is an even more critical element of distribution strategy than it was in 2004, and online submission of new business represents at least a quarter of all new business for more than 60% of respondents.
Policyholder portals also are a focus on investment for life/health insurers, and if they do not have one already, most insurers plan to implement one.
Also, prospect-facing e-business and online marketing have become more important to insurers over the past three years.
