In the economic crisis that began the last decade, many insurers looked at IT as part of the problem. In the most recent economic crisis, IT has been viewed as part of the solution. As insurers position themselves to take advantage of the recovery, they acknowledge the mature markets are unlikely to grow significantly and any significant growth will come from outperforming their peers. They remain committed to making continued technology investments improve customer and distributor service, achieve faster time to market, and use enterprise data to make better decisions in marketing, product design, risk management, and operations.

For 2010, most insurers' top projects are similar to those in 2009–policy administration systems, agent portals, and business intelligence. There is some increased prevalence of claims projects among larger property/casualty insurers and of policy administration among life/annuity/health insurers compared with 2009.

Insurers continue to focus on information technology investments that will support growth strategies, reduce operational expenses, and increase operational effectiveness. Strong information technology capabilities continue to be a critical success factor in this information industry. Insurers count on IT to help them provide:

• Better distributor service (e.g., agent portal and policy administration projects).
• Better customer service (e.g., customer portal and CRM projects).
• More rapid product introduction (e.g., policy administration system projects).
• Better insights based on data analysis (e.g., business intelligence and policy administration projects).
• More efficient workflows (e.g., projects in claims, underwriting, and BPM).
• Acceptable compliance and security (e.g., business intelligence projects).

Along with this recommitment, the tide seems to have shifted for insurers' IT budgets, albeit only slightly. After years of being asked to "do more with less," insurer CIOs have a new and slightly more realistic mandate: "Do a lot more with a little more."