Introduction

Analysis of themes driving core research for Datamonitor's insurance technology research stream in 2007

Scope

Focuses on the North American, European and Asia Pacific insurance technology markets Focuses on the Life and Non-life insurance segments Explores how business trends and institution strategies across this industry are driving IT priorities, decision making and technology investment

Highlights

Industry concentration will continue, particularly in the European life and US non-life segments, gradually resulting in a less fragmented industry. Larger insurers tend to be both better capitalized and in need of integration, and these firms will increasingly make architecture integration the cornerstone of their technology investment. Insurers are beginning to realize that a move toward an enterprise view of data is essential for enabling cross-segment (E.g. policy administration, product development, customer service) efficiency. Investment in enterprise data initiatives is expected to rise in 2007, following, and mirroring, the investment in application integration the insurance industry has undertaken in earnest in the past several years.

Reasons to Purchase

This brief is essential reading for you to identify and track the key forces shaping the prospects for your business. Datamonitor's lead analyst will outline the trends in your market, explain how this has shaped our research agenda for 2007

DATAMONITOR VIEW 1
CATALYST 1
SUMMARY 1
2007 TRENDS TO WATCH: INSURANCE TECHNOLOGY 2
The top business issues facing the insurance industry 2
Maintaining performance amidst growing competition 2
Leveraging in-house information to build more effective enterprise-wide business capabilities 2
The information-intensive global Insurance industry continues to struggle with how to store, measure and use the data at the core of all insurance operations. Especially for the largest carriers, who may operate in dozens of business lines and offer hundreds of products, integrating policyholder information, risk profiles, and catastrophe and actuarial models can result in faster time to market, development of higher-demand products, more accurate underwriting and rating and timelier regulatory reporting. The presence of "architecture islands" containing vast but isolated data stores is considered a serious impediment to achieving these goals. 2
Meeting onerous regulatory requirements in the global insurance industry 3
Theme 1: Sales and Service Issues in Insurance 3
Theme 2: Data Integration and Business Intelligence in Insurance 4
Theme 3: Regulation/operational risk management for insurers 5
This theme examines the methods by which insurers are consolidating risk management and regulatory reporting practices. Most insurers' financial services firms continue to take an ad hoc approach within individual business units to managing risk and compliance activities. Under this method, information is captured but remains in silos, hindering timely access to data essential to make critical operational decisions. This may prevent detection of potential risk events early enough to prevent them. Silo structures also inhibit the sharing of knowledge related to best practices and create redundant and incompatible data, which complicates technology decisions. 5
DATAMONITOR'S TAKE 5
A look ahead at 2007 5
APPENDIX 7
Definitions 7
Business Process Management (BPM): processes, or software (BPMS) that provide tools enabling businesses to identify and ultimately optimize, adapt and manage various business processes. Because these tools can incorporate a number of additional technologies, including mapping software, workflow, rules engines, they are often defined by the processes and monitoring capabilities in addition to the technology components. 7
Customer Resource Management (CRM): software and processes that enable stronger relationship with customers and clients, including client file gathering and storage, channel integration capabilities and analytical capabilities. Datamonitor maintains subdivisions of CRM into a) operational CRM, or the automation of business processes and contact processes, and b) analytical CRM, or the use of business intelligence in developing further understanding of customer behavior and patterns for use in other business processes. 7
Further reading 7
Ask the analyst 7