Managing Insurance Business Demands While Controlling IT Budgets in Extraordinary Times

By Steve Addair During these dynamic economic times, many Property & Casualty business partners are adjusting to shifting markets and thus demanding even more services from their IT departments. However, IT budgets are not able to keep pace with the increased demand. This article discusses how IT leaders can implement key strategies to provide for these evolving business needs while controlling expenditures.

As insurance products continue to become more commoditized, IT departments are pushed to provide features that can create competitive market differentiation. Property & Casualty companies now require more frequent rate changes, new product line rollouts, varied product distribution channels, agent and consumer web portals, and other creative IT initiatives without a commensurate increase in their budget.

In many cases, operational IT budgets are shrinking to offset the poor performing investment portfolios and the deteriorating loss ratios resulting from a prolonged soft market. Clearly, CIO’s must find areas of operational efficiencies in their existing systems while investing their limited capital budgets into new technologies that will ultimately reduce labor costs. Such savings are often realized by delivering real-time and automated point-of-sale underwriting, binding, policy processing, and consumer self-service.