Insurance Industry Urged To Embrace SaaS

The Software-as-a-Service revolution has brought a new wave of automation to businesses across sectors and has played a crucial part in the operations of a modern company, from providing easier cash flow management solutions to sourcing Big Data for analytics purposes.

But according to researchers, the insurance industry in particular is in need of adopting SaaS solutions, or players will risk getting pushed out of the market.

Reports published Monday (June 15) revealed that analyst firm Ovum found SaaS will entirely transform the insurance market in only five years. And while Ovum principle insurance analyst Charles Juniper said that the number of insurance companies that have not yet adopted SaaS into their businesses is the minority, they must implement a plan to adopt SaaS within the next two years.

“As SaaS becomes increasingly mainstream, all insurers must have a clearly defined and widely internally communicated strategy for SaaS and cloud,” he said. “For the minority of insurers that do not have some level of SaaS strategy, it must become an urgent priority.”

Juniper’s remarks are the result of Ovum research that highlights the role SaaS can play in streamlining and improving the global insurance market. At present, researchers found, at least one-third of insurers have already implemented a full SaaS strategy.

But for those that are not yet planning to adopt the technology thanks to security and regulatory concerns, Ovum analysts are signaling that those fears are no longer an excuse to ignore SaaS solutions.

“They should not wait for the technology to mature further or for remaining issues to be completely resolved, as this delay will significantly reduce the benefits of adoption,” Juniper concluded. Researchers have highlighted cost savings as one of several significant benefits of SaaS that insurance companies should focus on to move towards its adoption. Software tools can more broadly support the long-term goals of an insurance company, Juniper said, or facilitate companies’ expansion into new markets.

The findings follow only days after Data-as-a-Service provider Saama revealed a new data analytics tool specific to the insurance industry, concluding that data is “the most important asset for insurance companies.”