Digital transformation, data mastery and analytics, and IT-enabled innovation are among the hot topics on CIOs’ agendas in Asia-Pacific.

In the report Insurance in Asia 2014: The CIO Perspective, Celent reviews business priorities, IT initiatives and spending, and other IT topics in the Asia-Pacific insurance industry. Trends discussed in this report reflect Celent’s experience of the market based on ongoing discussions with the industry and, specifically, a survey with CIOs at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014.

“Digital transformation is a major project driver nowadays. Over 70% of surveyed insurers are already working on digital transformation initiatives,” says Wenli Yuan, Senior Analyst with Celent's Asian Financial Services Group and author of the report. “With the emergence of Web 2.0, companies have been able to get access to a larger set of data, and the insurance industry is starting to understand the opportunities open data can offer. Data mastery and analytics are going to be important investments for APAC insurers going forward.”

The survey questions covered business and IT priorities for 2014 as well as details around budgets, IT projects, digitization, outsourcing, system transformations, and innovation.