These leaders have stated that the core systems are in need of modernizing across the board.
According to the results of a recent survey, two out of every three insurance industry executives – among the 200 who participated – said that they were dealing with aging legacy systems.
This issue could result in a wide reaching barrier to being able to reach new markets.
SAP AG has indicated that the current issue of aging legacy systems in the insurance industry could make it harder for insurers to reach new markets, and could also make it difficult for them to be able to manage the full life cycle of the customer. The survey also looked into the way that the execs felt that this modernization issue should be managed.
The majority of the insurance industry executives felt that a trusted integrated solutions platform partner was the solution.
Among the respondents, 54 percent felt that companies throughout the insurance industry would need to find a trusted partner that has an integrated solution platform if they wished to use the best practice to overcome the issue of aging. The proportion of execs who felt that this was the best practice was greater than the other two responses, combined.
Twenty three percent of the respondents said that the best route for the insurance industry execs to take would be to, as much as possible, preserve the legacy systems. Moreover another 23 percent would prefer to use an in-house build in order to replace the current legacy systems.
The survey was conducted on June 3 and 4, 2013, and involved the participation of 203 insurance industry executives, who were interviewed during their attendance of the 2013 Annual Conference of the Insurance Accounting & Systems Association, which was held in Washington D.C.
Even though the major challenges to the insurance industry, which have to be effectively addressed to accomplish core system modernization was recognized throughout, SAP AG stated in their report on the survey that 38 percent of the respondents said that their systems were completely out of date, that they were poorly integrated, and that it would not be possible to incrementally modernize them. An additional 29 percent said that they would not be able to bring the business and IT teams together to completely understand both the opportunity and the problem being faced.
