Everyone agrees COVID-19 is changing the P&C insurance industry. But there has been very little information available on how COVID-19 will impact insurers’ IT plans and budget.
Now there is some data on these critical questions -- provided by a just completed Celent survey of CIOs. This data has results for large, midsize and small insurers.
The survey asked CIOs five questions about IT plans for the rest of 2020:
- Has the COVID-19 crisis changed the importance of key business goals on your IT plans for 2020?
- Has the COVID-19 crisis caused a review of your 2020 IT budgets?
- What changes are likely to happen to your 2020 IT budget during the rest of this year?
- What impact will the COVID-19 crisis have on your plans for major application portfolio projects during the rest of 2020?
- What impact will the COVID-19 crisis have on your plans for smaller application portfolio projects during the rest of 2020?
These are some of the survey’s most important findings:
- There will be some fairly widespread, but not universal, reductions in insurers’ original 2020 IT budgets
- Projects already underway (especially larger ones) will for the most part continue
- A significant number of projects not yet begun may be delayed or cancelled
- Notwithstanding the very real challenges of COVID-19’s many negative impacts, many CIOs’ comments convey a sense of resilience and cautious optimism. For example, one told us, “We still don’t have enough confidence in the forecast of business impact to ascertain IT impact. However, this has highlighted the need to continue to invest in digital, automation, efficiency and modernization with additional emphasis and acceleration on already planned digital workplace efforts."
And here are the results of one of the five survey questions: Has the insurer’s original 2020 budget has been reviewed since the COVID-19 crisis began?
The full report is available to Celent research subscribers at celent.com.
