Snap Poll on IT Cost Tracking in Life Insurance

Snap polls reflect questions posed by members of the Celent Executive Research Panel, a group of C level executives in the insurance industry. This question came about from a member who is looking at their digital transformation strategies and progress. Twelve insurers responded to this survey over the course of August 6-11, 2021.

A panel member wanted insights into how insurance companies define and track IT costs for relative benchmark or comparative purposes. To explore this query, the following prompting questions were supplied for the poll, but members were encouraged to answer in any form they wanted to explaining their calculations for IT cost tracking and benchmarking. The questions included:

1. Do you track IT costs as a ratio to other measures, or as a component of a unit calculation?
2. If so, what ratios or unit measures do you track? (Examples might be IT costs as a ratio to written premium, or assets under management.)
3. Do you look at components of IT costs (i.e., do you exclude certain parts of IT expense, such as large one-time or large transformation projects, or other exclusions for your calculations)?
4. Do you use an external source to benchmark your IT costs? If so, what source?

About Celent’s Research Panel

The Celent Research Panel is a free knowledge sharing resource for senior technology and operations executives at insurers in North America.It provides an easy way for executives to share information, obtain quantitative data, and learn from each otherthrough regular ongoing surveys, snap polls, round tables, and webinars.If you are interested in joining the Celent research panel, you can reach out to Dan McCoach dmccoach@celent.com