Study Details U.S./Europe CIO Priorities

A new study by Boston-based consulting firm Celent, LLC found that U.S. and European insurance CIOs are focusing on the same business issues but are taking a different approach to staffing and partnering with vendors.

In the report, "Insurance CIO/CTO Pressures, Priorities, Projects and Plans: The View Across the Atlantic," Celent provides a comparative analysis about behaviors, initiatives, challenges and priorities for 2007 between insurers in the United States and Europe.

The study is based on in-depth surveys of 46 chief information officers and chief technology officers from the U.S. and Europe at the end of 2006, Celent said.

"There is a general convergence on business issues," said Catherine Stagg-Macey, senior analyst and one of the authors of the report. "Insurers on both sides of the Atlantic are focused on meeting market demands, especially for speed of service delivery and processing. This business driver is reflected in the [information technology] initiatives around broker portals and other e-business projects."

"The biggest Trans-Atlantic difference is in vendor-partner utilization," noted Matthew Josefowicz, managing director of Celent's insurance practice and co-author of the report. "European insurers are much more heavily invested in outsourcing, while U.S. insurers tend to prefer to keep development efforts in-house. In addition, U.S. insurers are much more focused on vended software applications, while Europeans are much more interested in custom-builds with consulting partners."

"Data Mastery is a common theme in both regions," added co-author Ashley Evans, an analyst in Celent's insurance practice. "Insurers across the world are trying to cope with a flood of external data while getting a better handle on their own internal customer, product, process and risk data."

The 31-page report covers a broad range of areas, including detailed budget breakdowns, staffing plans and ratios, technology preferences and uses, use of Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA), approach to Data Mastery, and other areas. The report contains 21 figures analyzing responses from those surveyed.

Additional information is available at www.celent.com.