Insurer's Choice Technology Ranking 2008

Choosing which technology firms to work with is not a trivial matter. Insurance is an information-based product with a financial wrap. Supporting the various internal and external information flows throughout the value chains connecting clients, producers, prospects, and other stakeholders is the very lifeblood of our industry. In fact, in 2007, Financial Insights, an IDC company, estimates L&H firms spent $16.5 billion on IT while P&C firms spent almost $19 billion.

Which would you choose as the important technology firms your company uses to keep the business operating, keep informed, or maintain its financials? How satisfied are you with the technology firms you do business with across functional categories such as these? Insurer's Choice 2008--a collaborative partnership between Financial Insights and Tech Decisions--offers the insurance industry answers to these questions. The results aren't derived from either of our organizations nor from the technology firms themselves. The responses to Insurer's Choice 2008 are from your peers in the L&H and P&C North American insurance industry who answered the survey that was available from October 2007 to early January 2008. The 600-plus insurance professionals participating in the survey chose who they thought were the most important technology firms they used across several business-oriented categories and indicated how satisfied they have been with these technology firms.

Although the emergent economic situation in 2008 doesn't look very healthy, insurers still must have the technological support to maintain a profitable book of business and generate new profitable streams of revenue. Whether investing in the more traditional license and maintenance fee costs of software, pursuing a hosted application management path, or even looking to Software as a Service (SaaS), IT expenses are not headed down any time soon. Having a handle on which technology firms to use remains a vital requirement for the insurance industry.

Insurer's Choice 2008 is not the definitive word, but these results highlight those technology firms being chosen as important by you and your competitors in the insurance industry. This portfolio of technology firms across a spectrum of business categories represents potential short-list candidates. If not that, at least as alternatives to be aware of when developing your short list.

For those of you who took the survey, thank you. We appreciate the time you spent to answer our questions. Whether you answered the survey or not, what business categories are important to you? Which ones are not important? Does seeing the satisfaction level help you? What can we do better next time? Please let me know at brabkin@financial-insights.com or at 508-988-6729.

Barry Rabkin
Senior Research Analyst, Insurance
Financial Insights, an IDC Company


Read more about the Insurer's Choice Technology Ranking 2008.

View the Insurer's Choice Technology Ranking 2008 Winners.