Gartner Inc has released a report entitled “Market Trends: No Escaping BI and Analytics in Insurance in 2011”, which gave SAS the top rank in software market size.
In the report, the business analytics software and services leader was shown to have a quarter of the 2010 market share, with a $138.7 million revenue.
The Gartner report said that insurance companies are focused on risk management, compliance with regulations, acquisition and retention of customers, and the achievement of excellence within their operation. These goals, according to Gartner, are pushing technology investments forward, with a significant concentration on data architecture and quality, the use of data in metrics for financial performance and operations, the development of new and current products, claims analytics, detection of fraud, and reporting and compliance.
It explained that “Insurers are maturing in their use of BI platforms and analytics tools, especially as these tools mature and become available with usable interfaces.”
It went on to say that business intelligence (BI) is primarily used for performance management, but that insurers are starting to apply it much more frequently in claims analytics, and that it is showing significant potential for analytics in the detection of fraud.
Gartner anticipates that predictive analytics will become much more central in areas such as pricing and risk modeling, as insurers grow their products, as well as in customer retention and the effort to up-sell when appropriate.
Furthermore, according to global insurance marketing manager Stuart Rose at SAS, the insurance industry is starting to break away from using analytical initiatives almost exclusively for improved efficiency of operations and revenue growth, and are expanding to recent trends such as social media, “big data”, and telematics.
