Boston, MA, USA
September 11, 2007 Top
Ten Trends in P/C E-Business 2007 and Beyond
Report Published by Celent
E-Business continues to focus on supporting
agents, but consumer elements are assuming new importance as well.
In 2004, Celent published a report on
trends in property/casualty e-business that contained 10 projections for
2007. In this report, Celent revisits those projections based on updated
survey data from 44 property/casualty insurer executives and looks forward
to 2010.
"In 2004, we rightly predicted the
increasing ubiquity and importance of agent e-business," comments Matthew
Josefowicz, managing director of Celent’s insurance practice and
lead author of the report. "While we were a little over-aggressive in
projections for the amount of new business that would be submitted
electronically by 2007. Rates have continued to grow and show signs of
increasing further. We also may have been conservative in our projections
for online quoting and sales in personal lines."
Other findings from the report include:
- Budget percentages devoted to
e-business have remained steady at an average of 5–15%, with a
dominant focus on agent e-business and homegrown or custom-built
solutions.
- Policyholder portals continue to be a
check-list item for property/casualty insurers, but even there,
usage is growing with a third of survey participants reporting more
than 50% growth in usage.
- Prospect-facing e-business and online
marketing have gained mind share among insurers over the past three
years. Online quoting and the integration of online quoting with
agent distribution channels has also grown and demonstrated value.
Looking forward to 2010,
Celent sees the following developments on the horizon:
- More sophisticated
interfaces, built on AJAX or the next generation of web technology
- A steady increase in the percentage
of new business submitted online
- An incremental increase in
policyholder portal adoption
- Ubiquity of online quoting and other
rich functionality for prospect-facing websites in personal lines
as well as more informational tools for risk managers in
commercial lines
- At least a 50% increase in online
marketing spending and a greater increase on search engine
optimization
The 32 page report contains 21 figures
analyzing survey data. A table
of contents is available online. A companion report on
life/health will be published later this month.
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