Large property/casualty insurers are widening their lead over small- and medium-sized competitors in the race to add advanced technologies into daily work, Novarica concluded in a new report.

“Benchmarking the New Normal: 50 Advanced Capabilities for P&C Insurers,” sums up that and other findings, based on a survey of 60 P&C chief information officers. The consultancy found that larger insurers are leading the pack in terms of adding advanced capabilities to daily underwriting and marketing activities. Analytics, data, digital channels, modern applications and innovative business practices are all factors in this trend, according to Novarica’s report.

“Large insurers are more likely to have deployed nearly ever advance capability, especially those related to analytics and mobile,” Novarica noted.

According to the report, larger property/casualty rivals were more likely than their smaller rivals to:

• Factor experience and analytical models into product design.
• Deploy centralized product modeling systems in at least part of their business.
• Have CRM-driven campaigns integrated across their other systems.
• Do customer behavior profiling in at least some areas.
• Provide mobile support to agents, and support e-signatures.
• Already use, or plan to use, predictive scoring in underwriting.
• Be embracing advanced capabilities and technology at a much higher rate then their midsized rivals in all claims areas.
• Offer paperless claims processes in at least some areas.
• Have analytical decision-making by senior executives and user-friendly reports (though midsize insurers are nipping at their heels in this area).
• Rely on self-service analytics.
• Have executive compensation linked to innovation, more than double the rate of their midsized competitors.
• To use enterprise crowdsourcing for innovation or use internal social media for daily internal business.

Larger insurers are facing competition in at least some “advanced capability” areas, Novarica noted, including product, underwriting and customer experience for areas such as paperless claims.

“These areas are rapidly becoming competitive necessities,” Novarica noted in its report.

Looking ahead to 2015, Novarica said it expects increases in analytic-driven product design, and product design optimized for the buying/selling experience.

Source: Novarica