More than 50 members of the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council, a moderated knowledge-sharing community for insurer CIOs and senior IT executives, met last week to discuss the issues they face as CIOs in the industry.

Among the points discussed at the meeting were:

• Despite the hype around new areas like mobile, social media, and cloud, the story of insurer IT budgets and projects for 2012 is one of continuity.
• Insurers are investing, through replacements and enhancements, in delivering the business capabilities needed to support growth, achieve competitive parity, and improve operational effectiveness.
• Insurers' systems are clearly not up to the challenge of the current business environment. In recent research conducted among the more than 300 insurer CIO members of the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council, most insurers rate nearly half of their systems below the level of "acceptable."
• The need to enable business capabilities drives IT strategy. Top priorities vary widely, but top priorities generally include supporting business intelligence and data analytics, reducing operating expenses, increasing speed to market, and improving distributor ease of doing business.

Novarica published a report presenting some of the key points from these discussions along with relevant research.

"The Novarica council event is the only place where the door is shut and CIOs from around the industry speak openly and honestly about how to solve real world problems," says council member Stuart Tainsky, CIO of PURE.