Celent has released a new report titled Property/Casualty CIO Pressures and Priorities 2017: North America Edition. The report was written by Donald Light, a Research Director with Celent’s Insurance practice.

This report Celent presents the key findings from its annual survey of North American property/casualty CIOs, outlining their priorities and pressures for 2017.

CIOs in all segments identify the business goals of growth and retention, process optimization, and innovation as the most important influences on their IT plans.

Two initiative types lead the CIOs’ rankings in all three segments: legacy modernization and digital (including analytics and the Internet of Things).

The increases of 7% for midsize insurers and 3% for large insurers are consistent with prior years. The 7% increase for smaller insurers is a bounce back from a 3% increase a year earlier.

“CIOs are looking forward to 2017 as a year supported by adequate resources, focusing on enabling smart growth for their business partners,” observed Light.

“Another new question on this year’s survey asks CIOs how they are engaging with insurtech,” Light continued. “Among all sizes of insurers, monitoring was overwhelmingly the most common response. A handful of large and midsize insurers are piloting. And a very small portion of large and midsize insurers are investing in insurtech. No CIO reported insurtech in production.”