44% of Asian insurers still optimistic

Some parts of the world may have experienced a global downturn but Asia's insurance business remains largely unaffected by the economic crisis.

In a recent Celent survey conducted with insurance CIOs throughout Asia, 44 percent of Asian insurers have not significantly changed their business strategy, budget/IT spending and product/distribution channels, although growth in certain lines has been negatively impacted.

“Despite the financial crisis, Asian insurers’ IT budgets are holding steady. Over 85 percent of the survey participants increased or allocated the same budget for 2010 as 2009,” said Wenli Yuan, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Asian Financial Services Group.

Yuan is co-author of a 38-page report entitled “Asia Insurance – The Year Ahead: The CIO Perspective,” which discusses themes in the Asian insurance market, including business growth, cost reduction, ease of doing business, meeting regulation requirements, time to market, and related IT initiatives.

“Underwriting/policy administration, customer service representative portal/desktop, and agent portals are the top three focus areas for increased technology investment,” added Yuan.

Analyst with Celent’s Asian Financial Services Group and co-author of the report KyongSun Kong further explained that in Japan, software developed in-house is still the rule rather than the exception in the insurance industry.

“However, in the next few years, a surge is expected in the number of insurance companies considering the introduction of external software.”

A table of contents for the report is available online.