A recent Towers Perrin survey found that 74 percent of claim officers at property-casualty insurers reported their main objective for making technology-related investments during the next 24 months will be to improve the customer experience, while 69 percent pointed to improving cycle times.
The majority (66 percent) of respondents plan to improve their management information systems and reporting capabilities. Exactly 39 percent of respondents said their current claim technology platform is a centralized mainframe, while 30 percent said their firm's platforms are a distributed client/server.
"Carriers have specific objectives for making technology investments over the next two years which, in turn, support broader low cost and expense reduction goals," said Kathleen Cullen, Towers Perrin senior consultant and co-author of the survey report, in a statement. "Based on the findings, it's clear that carriers are making investments aimed at improving or replacing front-end and back-end claim systems--ultimately leading to improved bottom-line performance."
Predictive modeling or the technology-driven use of advanced statistical techniques to simultaneously evaluate potential risk factors, 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 and data cannot adequately support predictive modeling, a problem that will be resolved by heavier investment in claim technology."
