The top business need driving 2012 P&C insurance technology initiatives is growth, according to a survey released today by technology solution provider
Accurate risk pricing in underwriting and enhanced overall administrative efficiency tied for second place, says the company. According to survey results, policy administration projects scored highest in the prioritization of large-scale projects (53 percent). Analytics/business intelligence projects were the second highest priority (47 percent).
Other findings put forth by StoneRiver included: A sizable increase in the participants interested in end-to-end solutions from a single supplier (up 24 percent to 47 percent in 2011) vs. best-of-breed systems from multiple suppliers (down 15 percent to 24 percent in 2011). The significance of system interoperability, which retained its top ranking in as "very important" (2011: 50 percent, 2010: 42 percent).
In the "important" category, platform flexibility (56 percent) edged out last year's favorite Data Accessibility (53 percent). A rise in the projected percentage of vendor-supplied applications and services in the next five years. This year 59 percent anticipate 50 percent or more of their technology infrastructure will be based on vendor-supplied applications. Last year only 38 percent anticipated that usage of vendor-supplied applications, said the vendor.
"The indicated business drivers of growth, efficiency and optimization were underscored throughout the survey from priority of business needs all the way through the expected technology infrastructure," stated Chris Phillips, chief architect, StoneRiver. "The survey shows a strong theme of a desired IT agility and flexibility through the high priority placed on technologies such as SOA, componentized architectures and interoperability of systems. Evolving services capabilities and ongoing needs for open access to underlying data also support the targets of growth, efficiency and optimization by enabling composite Web applications and effective business process orchestration and automation."
