Future Trends and Predictions in Life, Pensions, and Annuities Policy Administration Systems

EMEA policy administration systems continue to improve, with many vendors now offering complete end-to-end solutions for the life, annuity and pension markets built on modern technologies.

In a new report, Future Trends and Predictions in Life, Pensions, and Annuities Policy Administration Systems, Celent investigates the main functionality and technology trends across vendor solutions sold in EMEA, and makes some predictions as to how these solutions could develop.

Top trends identified in the report include:

• Richer features, greater breadth. With each year and each implementation, vendor solutions continue to offer more features and lines of business.
• Increasingly componentized, more open. Vendor solutions are fast adopting open standards and becoming more modular, enabling them to better coexist with both the legacy and newer technologies.
• Greater focus on usability, user productivity. Vendors are investing in streamlining their user interfaces with a view towards increasing user productivity and easing adoption.
• Increasing levels of separation between distribution, product manufacture, and asset management. Reflecting changes in market structure, distribution, product manufacture, and asset management are fast becoming distinct propositions, each with a clear identity of its own.

Top predictions by Celent include:

• Continued growth in the development and rollout of group capabilities.
• Continued convergence with wealth management solutions for the development of platforms and more complex investment-related products.
• Increased adoption of emergent technologies at the edges of the core solutions, cautiously expanding into software as a service, mobile, and social media.
• Further market contraction and consolidation resulting in fewer, larger regional players.

“The EMEA policy administration solution market is very competitive,” says Nicolas Michellod, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Insurance group and coauthor of the report. “To stay ahead of the competition, it is essential for software vendors to continue to develop their core products to ensure that they both comply with the latest regional legislation and adapt to changing user expectations.”

“For many vendors, an effective partnership model will be key to their ongoing success,” adds Jamie Macgregor, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Insurance group and coauthor of the report. “Incorporating external knowledge into the core product design that goes beyond the requirements of the existing client base can be a great source of differentiation for vendors willing to engage their partners. Currently, however, 68% of the vendors surveyed do not yet have a preferred implementation partner. Clearly, there is still more left to do across the industry in maturing partnership models.”

This report examines the functionality and features, technologies used, implementation factors, trends and predictions of life, annuity, and pension policy administration systems in EMEA.