Business intelligence (BI) has become a popular tool among insurers in the last ten years, and interest is only growing. Novarica’s IT Budgets and Projects report shows that both P/C and L/H/A carriers are prioritizing investments in BI and analytics. There’s untapped potential for insurers’ BI initiatives: Most carriers are still working with only basic analytics capabilities.
Why are they sticking with the basics? For starters, many carriers are dealing with the issue of siloed data, often stuck in out of date legacy systems. There’s also the question of gaining support from the business side of the enterprise. Insurers hoping to improve their abilities in BI and analytics are partnering with third-party providers in some cases or turning to newer tools like IoT-connected devices.
BI solutions for insurers differ from typical core systems solutions. There are no true standards for what a BI solution entails, meaning insurers often license software from a range of vendors to have a full range of analytics capabilities. But a picture of the preferred platform for insurance purposes is beginning to emerge. Most offer some combination of reporting/dashboards, data warehouses, data governance and transformation tools, and ETL functionality, along with other capabilities. More advanced functionality like predictive analytics falls under the greater umbrella of BI, but it often requires a separate toolset to be truly effective.
Insurer IT leaders hoping to enhance (or replace) their BI capabilities should collaborate with leaders from other departments—in some cases this may mean establishing the role of chief data officer—to convey to all parties how much value data can bring. To learn more about solutions available in this space, read our latest Market Navigator, Business Intelligence Solutions for Insurers.
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