According to Gartner, which places the maturity of insurer’s use of cloud in the middle of the spectrum (“moderate”), cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is being seen in insurance primarily in non-core applications such as email, collaboration, file-sharing, and Web conferencing. Gartner predicts that enterprise applications not seen as competitive assets—such as financial management, HR and procurement—will lead cloud adoption among insurers, while the use of SaaS for vertical solutions will remain limited. 

Accenture identifies three waves of adoption of cloud at the application level. The first two waves involved horizontal solutions, with the first involving insurers looking at CRM, human capital, and financial management software and the second focused on desktop productivity tools, including word processing, spreadsheets, email and web conferencing. The third wave will involve vertical, core applications. Accenture observes that in this third wave, insurers are first targeting specific points in core processes—such as first notice of loss in claims—before moving to deeper levels of SaaS deployment.