Revealed: Top 8 Insurance IT Spending Projects
October 2, 2015 11:18 AM
Insurance IT analyst firm Novarica surveyed the 104 members of its CIO Council to get a handle on where insurance tech leaders expect to spend most of their budget in 2016. Here are the findings:
1. Core Systems
The No. 1 item was sometimes more specific, Novarica says: one midsize life and annuity carrier will Sunset Legacy Policy Administration Systems while a midsize P&C insurer will Outsource hosting of PAS system.
2. Digital/User Experience
Responses were "focused mostly on enhancing portals but also on improving internal user experience" for customers and agents, Novarica reports.
3. Data and Analytics
For this category, more specific responses included Data collection and cleansing and Implementing BI outside of Marketing," according to Novarica.
4. New capabilities
This "has some overlap with other areas, especially digital, but were called out as a separate category when the respondent specifically mentioned introducing a new capability rather than enhancing or replacing an existing capability," Novarica says. It includes everything from "new agent portals (cited by many of the life insurer respondents), new direct channels (large P/C insurer), and introducing pre-fill for personal auto and home policies (midsize P/C insurer)," the company continues.
5. IT Operations
Specific initiatives in this category included things like "migrating from Waterfall to Agile development," Novarica says.
6. IT Infrastructure
Large P/C insurers were nearly twice as likely to include IT infrastructure in their top three priorities as insurers in other groups, according to Novarica.
7. Security
"While security gets a lot of attention, only one in four insurers in the sample ranked it in their top three challenges for 2016," Novarica reports.
8. Costs and Budget
Finally, insurers will devote some amount of resources to expense reduction or acquiring resources for all the above projects, Novarica says.