A recent Towers Perrin survey found that 74 percent of claimofficers at property-casualty insurers reported their mainobjective for making technology-related investments during the next24 months will be to improve the customer experience, while 69percent pointed to improving cycle times.

The majority (66 percent) ofrespondents plan to improve their management information systemsand reporting capabilities. Exactly 39 percent of respondents saidtheir current claim technology platform is a centralized mainframe,while 30 percent said their firm's platforms are a distributedclient/server.

“Carriers have specific objectives for making technologyinvestments over the next two years which, in turn, support broaderlow cost and expense reduction goals,” said Kathleen Cullen, TowersPerrin senior consultant and co-author of the survey report, in astatement. “Based on the findings, it's clear that carriers aremaking investments aimed at improving or replacing front-end andback-end claim systems–ultimately leading to improved bottom-lineperformance.”

Predictive modeling or the technology-driven use of advancedstatistical techniques to simultaneously evaluate potential riskfactors, were reported as profitable by only 14 of respondents.Brian Stoll, Towers Perrin senior consultant and report co-author,said “This could be because many companies' current systems anddata cannot adequately support predictive modeling, a problem thatwill be resolved by heavier investment in claim technology.”