Insurers have been trying to transform their organizations for decades. Despite significant investments of time and money over the years, however, few have much to show for their efforts. Now, the pressure for radical change has never been greater, and the stakes continue to rise. While insurers have the will (along with the data and methodologies) to make transformative changes, the reality is that to truly reinvent their businesses will require much more. Indeed, if providers wish to not only survive but thrive in the coming years, they will need to examine, assess and transform virtually every aspect of their organization.

To learn more about the challenges and opportunities facing the industry today, we surveyed more than 70 executives from many of the largest and most prominent insurance companies in the world. The findings are compelling. While insurers are well aware of the hurdles they face as they set out to transform their operations, many admit that they’re struggling to extract the full value from these initiatives and that they’re lacking some of the key capabilities they’ll need in order to drive change on the scale required. At the same time, however, the data reveals that many insurance companies have a number of inherent advantages that could be leveraged to help improve their transformation journeys. 

We hope this report provides insurance executives with some valuable insights and ideas to help inform their companies’ transformation agendas. This is the first in our Empowered for the Future series. Our next research report will examine the changing role of the CIO available November 2016.