Policy Administration Systems 2005: Life/Health/Annuity Vendors

Detailed Profiles and Comparisons of 18 Systems.

Celent痴 latest report is the most comprehensive available study on life/health/annuity policy administration systems. Along with recent reports on the overall market for PAS systems and reports on commercial lines and personal lines systems vendors, the publication of this report completes Celent痴 2005 update on the policy administration systems market. The next updates are planned for early 2007.

"Since 2003, the landscape has changed somewhat for L/H/A policy administration systems, but not nearly enough. One-third of the fully profiled systems still rely on COBOL. The bright spot is that a number of truly modern solutions now exist, and several new entrants with modern solutions are available or will be soon," said Chad Hersh, a senior analyst in Celent痴 insurance group and primary author of the reports. "The industry continues to move forward slowly, but forward nevertheless. Adoption by vendors of ACORD XML continues to grow, as does the use of Web services and service-oriented architectures. Change is coming, and it is a good time for insurers to re-evaluate their options for core systems."

Celent痴 new report is designed to help life/health/annuity insurers understand this marketplace. The report contains detailed profiles of 18 commercial lines policy administration systems and limited profiles of four additional systems that are new entrants to the market.

The report also uses Celent痴 new ABCD Vendor View, which is a standard representation of a vendor marketplace designed to show at a glance the relative positions of each vendor in four categories: Advanced technology, Breadth of functionality, Customer base, and Depth of client services. Unlike a simple "four-quadrant" map, solutions in the upper right are not necessarily the best solutions擁n an area as complex and idiosyncratic as policy admin, there is no one "best" for all cases. Insurers should consider which factors in breadth, technology, experience, and client service are most important to them, and use the profiles and comparative tables in this report to generate their own shortlists. Only fully-profiled vendors are included in the ABCD Vendor View.

The 18 vendors with full profiles are: AdminServer, CGI/Wyde, Computer Sciences Corporation (CyberLife, FUTUREfirst, and VANTAGE-ONE), Duck Creek Technologies, Fiserv Insurance Solutions, Genelco, LIDP, Management Data, Inc., McCamish Systems, LLC, Milliman, NaviSys, Rudd and Wisdom, EDS-SOLCORP (INGEIUM), SunGard, SunGard Sherwood, and Systems Engineering Group.

New Entrants with limited profiles included offerings from SAP/Accenture, EDS-SOLCORP (RADIENCE), Sapiens, and Tata Consultancy Services.

The report is 81 pages long and contains multiple figures and tables. A table of contents is available here.

of Celent Communications' Life/Health Insurance research service can download the report electronically by clicking on the icon to the left. Non-members should contact info@celent.com for more information.