Policy Administration Systems for Commercial Lines P/C Insurers 2009

Celent provides a detailed look at 38 commercial lines policy administration systems.

This report is the third in Celent’s biannual look at policy administration systems available to insurers in North America. Since the first report in 2005 and the second in 2007, activity level has remained high among both insurers and policy administration system vendors.

In the two years from January 2007 to December 2008, over 220 commercial and personal lines insurers licensed a new policy administration system. And at the end of 2008, over 100 insurers were in the process of implementation.

This report features Celent’s ABCD Vendor View. The ABCD Vendor View presents a comparative view of the vendor marketplace that visually represents four elements: Advanced technology and technical flexibility, Breadth of functionality, Customer base, and Depth of client services and solutions.

The report also describes the five core processes in a modern policy administration system, as well as five supporting capabilities, as shown in the figure.

"About two-thirds of the profiled vendors have issued a major new release that upgraded their technology platform, broadened their range of functionality, or both since 2007. Essentially all vendors have made a major investment in enabling their solution to work in an insurer’s SOA environment," says Jeff Goldberg, senior analyst with Celent’s insurance practice and coauthor of the report.

"Many solutions have also made important advances in usability and personalization—with benefits for new and experienced underwriters and service representatives," adds Donald Light, senior analyst in Celent’s insurance practice and coauthor of the report.