|
By Laton McCartney
There's light at the end of at least one industry tunnel. According the a global survey released earlier this week by Accenture, the management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company, nearly two thirds of insurers plan to expand outside of their home market over the next years.
The success of that expansion, however, will depend largely on insurers' ability to make their international operations more efficient by upgrading their IT operations. More than four in five insurers said they are seeking to do this by implementing changes in their back office capabilities (cited by 82 percent of respondents) and are implementing, or will implement, changes to their information technology infrastructure and services (cited by 81 percent.)
Only 13 percent of respondents said they presently a globally integrated operating model - where strategy and operations are managed globally in an integrated fashion - 20 percent of respondents said they plan to use such a model within the next three years.
In an earlier study done in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, Accenture noted that outsourcing is becoming increasing important to Insurers' IT infrastructure, The outsourcing of core applications and systems is set to grow, the study determined. Insurers and financial services firms most actively outsource secondary systems such as human resources and marketing applications, but they also indicated a greater level of comfort in entrusting core systems to the outsourcing process: 35 percent of respondents said they will increase the outsourcing of "strategic/primary" applications.
Outsourcing strategies are evolving toward a multi-vendor approach, the study found. It concluded there will be a steady shift to "multi-sourcing" as firms not only outsource more activities, but use offshore providers more frequently to complement their domestic outsourcing arrangements.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
