London, United Kingdom
8 August 2007 Insurance
CIO/CTO Pressures,
Priorities, Projects, and Plans:
The View Across the Atlantic
Report Published by Celent
US and European insurance CIOs are focusing
on the same business issues, but are taking a different approach to
staffing and partnering with vendors.
In a new report from Celent, Insurance
CIO/CTO Pressures, Priorities, Projects, and Plans: The View Across the
Atlantic, Celent provides a comparative analysis about behaviors,
initiatives, challenges, and priorities for 2007 between insurers in the
United States and Europe, based on its in-depth surveys of 46 CIO/CTOs
from the US and Europe at the end of 2006.
“There is a general convergence on
business issues,” says Catherine
Stagg-Macey, senior analyst and one of the authors of the report. “Insurers
on both sides of the Atlantic are focused on meeting market demands,
especially for speed of service delivery and processing. This business
driver is reflected in the IT initiatives around broker portals and other
e-business projects.”
“The biggest Trans-Atlantic difference is
in vendor-partner utilization,” notes Matthew
Josefowicz, managing director of Celent’s insurance practice and
co-author of the report. “European insurers are much more heavily
invested in outsourcing, while US insurers tend to prefer to keep
development efforts in house. In addition, US insurers are much more
focused on vended software applications, while Europeans are much more
interested in custom-builds with consulting partners.”
|
European
Insurer
|
US
Insurer
|
-
Key
focus on distribution and related IT initiatives
-
Aggressive
in outsourcing, especially in areas of telecom and application
maintenance/development
-
Reliance
on outsourcing results in smaller percentage of budget spent on
staff
-
Spend
55% of budget on maintenance
-
Top
three new projects are distribution, general administration and
infrastructure
-
Very
focused on data mastery, specifically around CDI and enterprise
portals
|
-
Key
focus on policy administration replacement
-
Less
likely to outsource
-
Staff
is largest budget category. Have higher percentage of technical
staff
-
Spend
62% of budget on maintenance
-
Top
three new project areas are IT infrastructure, policy
administration and claims.
-
Very
focused on data mastery specifically around BI and data
warehouse
|
| Source:
Celent analysis |
“Data Mastery is a common theme in both
regions,” says co-author Ashley Evans,
an analyst in Celent’s insurance practice. “Insurers across the world
are trying to cope with a flood of external data while getting a better
handle on their own internal customer, product, process, and risk data.”
The 31-page report covers a broad range of
areas, including detailed budget breakdowns, staffing plans and ratios,
technology preferences and uses, use of Web Services and service-oriented
architecture (SOA), approach to Data Mastery, and other areas. The report
contains 21 figures analyzing survey responses from 46 insurer CIOs.
A table of contents
is available online.
|
