Each year, CGI meets face-to-face with business and IT leaders to hear their views on the trends affecting their organizations. In 2018, we conducted 99 in-person interviews with insurance executives to learn more about their top trends and priorities.

Compliance moves to front and center

Spurred by regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regulatory compliance is the top insurance industry trend for 2018. Insurance executives we interviewed continue to feel the impact of fast-shifting consumer product and digital servicing expectations—last year’s top trend—which ranks just below regulatory compliance. The need to manage costs to maintain and improve combined operating ratio is this year’s third top trend, followed by cybersecurity concerns and the impact of emerging technologies.

Pace of digital transformation accelerates

Insurers continue to drive digital transformation, with 69% of executives interviewed indicating they have a digital transformation strategy in place. For those leaders with a defined digital transformation strategy, 26% indicate they have operationalized an enterprise-wide strategy for the internal organization. Just 17% say their strategy extends to their external partner and supplier ecosystem.

Culture change is top challenge to digital transformation

While the top two challenges to digital transformation (culture change and legacy constraints) remain unchanged from 2017 in this sector, executives increasingly cite human resource capabilities and cyber, regulatory and data protection changes as challenges this year.

Benchmarking internal IT and more

This year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. In the insurance sector, executives we interviewed give their IT organizations better-than-average marks compared to global averages in the areas of alignment with line of business needs and the ability to deliver on time and on budget. It is noteworthy that business leaders give their IT organizations higher marks for innovation than the IT organizations give themselves.

CGI can provide clients with a discussion of all available benchmarking, including each client’s positioning, on topics such as digital maturity, IT budgets, IT satisfaction, innovation investments and more.

Discover the insight

Download the 2018 CGI Client Global Insights insurance summary infographic for additional trend information. We also invite you to request a copy of our full report and to arrange a personal discussion with a CGI expert for further analysis and insights.

 

Also see the 2017 CGI Client Global Insights industry summaries.