From January 2011 to April 2013, more than 150 P&C insurers licensed a new policy administration system, according to a vendor report from Celent. As of April 2013, approximately 160 P&C insurers were in the implementation process. In that same two-and-a-half year span, nearly 50 life insurers licensed a new PAS.
The reports represent the fifth set of releases in Celent’s biennial series that looks at core systems available to P&C and life/health insurers in North America. Celent said activity level has remained high among both insurance sectors and PAS vendors since the first report in 2005.
Nearly all vendors have made major investments in upgrading features, functions, usability and integration methods in the past two years, Celent said. According to the research firm, there have been some upgrades to modern frameworks and languages; very few vendor applications now run on legacy platforms. And while some capabilities for configuring products, rules, document management and user interfaces (UIs) also have improved, true workflow/process design and mobile capabilities still lag.
“In general, these changes have occurred at a more modest pace than usability/personalization improvements for end users,” the report says.
The P&C report profiles 42 PASs in use for personal, commercial and specialty lines, including 28-full and 14-limited profiles. The life/health report includes 17-full and seven-limited profiles.
When it comes to life and health PAS vendors, recent upgrades have focused on usability and personalization, Celent said. Many added or upgraded web-based portal interfaces to benefit customer service representatives, underwriters and different distribution forces, according to the report. System administration capabilities for configuring products, rules, workflow, document management and user interfaces also have improved, though Celent noted that these changes occurred at a more modest pace than improvements for end users. Additionally, the systems profiled continue to add support for new lines of business, particularly group products.
