Customer Service Does Compute

P/C carriers want better IT for better customer service.

By Matthew Brodsky

The 2006 P/C Insurance Technology Survey from Fiserv Insurance Solutions, a provider of information management systems to the financial services industries, testifies to the P/C carriers' need for speed--IT speed.

And to satisfy it, many companies may be shelling out for an update on their policy administration system in late 2006, early 2007. Nearly 70 percent of respondents replied to this extent after being asked what their top IT priorities were.

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Also on the chopping block could be the old claims management and sales/agency support systems, which insurers indicate could also be the focus of their next big IT enhancement project--with roughly 40 percent of respondents for each.

Fiserv points to customer service as a key driver of this trend. As the authors of the report write, "These areas all focus on the ability to support customer service whether the customer is a consumer or an agent."

And what would an insurance IT survey be without the topic of integration? Nearly nine out of 10 respondents in the survey said that Web services were crucial to their integration strategy. More than half, on the other hand, said that their companies were evaluating Web services and business-oriented services.

"Companies want the ability to monitor activities in their company, regions, territories and offices using visual reporting mechanisms that provide instant update and access to details," wrote the report's authors.

Conducted in April 2006, the survey was composed of 14 questions intended to uncover carriers' business priorities, as well as the respondents' IT "appetite" and their supplier and platform preferences.

About one-third of the respondents were small regional carriers with less than $500,000 million in direct written premium, another third were national carriers with greater than $1 billion in direct written premium, and the largest percentage--45 percent--were large regional carriers with $500 million to $1 billion in direct written premium.

The respondents were also diverse in the lines that they wrote. About 81 percent wrote personal lines, 68 percent wrote commercial lines, and half wrote workers' comp.

October 15, 2006

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