Rating in the UK General Insurance Market

The evolution of pricing and rating approaches is now starting to overwhelm the technology that supports it. Insurers must look to update their supporting technology to deal with increasing complexity.

In a new report, , Celent examines the current pricing and rating environment for general insurance in the United Kingdom. There are increasing pressures on IT expenses, and even if yesterday’s technology could be cranked up to support new approaches, doing so would drive development and maintenance costs to unreasonable levels or require long lead times that insurers are unwilling to accept.

Every insurer should be looking at how they can address the challenges presented by the increasing expectations of consumers and brokers. Investment in the areas of rating and pricing could give them an unleveraged opportunity.

"The key word here is more," says Catherine Stagg-Macey, senior analyst with Celent’s Insurance Group and author of the report. "There are more data sources to consult, more channels to sell into, more market strategies to implement. Insurers need high levels of technology to be able to process this changing world effectively."

This report covers some of the technology challenges for this area of the insurance business and the solutions available to address these challenges. The goal of this report is to help technology staff understand the complexity of rating and pricing. This knowledge should better equip IT to support the business.

The 22-page report contains four figures and three tables. A table of contents is available online.

Members of Celent's Property/Casualty 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.