Give Insurance CIOs An Extra $5 Million and What Would They Buy?

If insurance industry chief information officers were given a sum, say $5 million, where would they spend it?

Travel? Investments? Toys?

Nope. They’d spend it on data and analytics.

A study by Novarica, a research and advisory firm, took that rather unorthodox methodology. It “gave” more than 100 insurer CIOs $5 million—well, in their dreams.

According to the survey, if faced with a free $3-5 million in their IT budget, most CIO insurers would spend on data and analytics, despite the already heavy investment in that area.

The CIOs also cited mobile as an area in which they are eager to invest, while officers for many smaller insurers would use the substantial budget increase for full core systems replacements.

“The survey stemmed from one of our insurer advisory clients, who posed this question to us,” said Novarica partner and managing director Matthew Josefowicz.

The question received answers from more than 120 insurer CIO and senior IT executive members, who came from property/casualty insurers under $1 billion and over $1 billion, and life/annuity insurers under $1 billion and over $1 billion.

For the larger insurers, Novarica says $3-5 million is a nice bump for their research and development budgets; for midsize and smaller insurers, the amount could mean a 25-100 percent budget increase.

Topics Carriers