Several aspects of this deal stand out. It is the first acquisition by Guidewire, which until now has been a “we build it, we sell it shop.” It augments Guidewire’s capabilities in the hottest part of the technology landscape: Business Intelligence/Analytics. And it reinforces Guidewire’s strategy to capture the community and network effect benefits of [...]

Celent recently held its first UK CIO Agenda Roundtable.   The aim of this event was to bring together senior IT executives from across the UK insurance industry to debate shared topics of interest.  The event was hosted by a CIO’s at their premises, and the prize for hosting was that the CIO got to choose [...]

Click, click, click—that’s the sound of more formerly independent policy administration vendors dropping into the product portfolios of larger solution vendors.  Today’s announcement by SAP of its intention to acquire Camilion is another significant move—following rapidly after Insurity’s acquisition of AQS on Tuesday. In both cases the acquirer is getting certain capabilities that augment what [...]

Lately people have joined Apple events hoping for something completely new and outlandish, some perhaps hoping Apple will slip up and over the last couple of years there has been talk of disappointment after then events. Indeed it’s becoming so hard for Apple to keep anything secret now that there are few surprises – but [...]

Celent conducted another successful Peer Networking Event (PNE), this time in Atlanta, Georgia. The event was well attended by insurers from around the area and even had representation from a bank. The PNEs are designed to bring together insurers to discuss topics that they find of interest, either due to immediate concerns or future direction. [...]

In our recent work in Latin America, it is clear that in the process of selecting core systems for countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, Insurers have been more focused on delivery and support capabilities than in the product. All vendors claim quick time to market, low TCO, quick ROI, strong [...]

My colleague Jamie Macgregor and I have published the Celent’s regular report profiling policy administration system (PAS) vendors in the life and pension space in Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) back in November 2011. This report profiles 34 systems offered to EMEA insurers on the market. Beside this research we thought it would be [...]

This week, Celent hosted a London event on the UK regulatory topic of Retail Distribution Review (RDR) that will impact the entire life insurance industry. As Jamie Macgregor, pointed out, there are a little over 50 planning weeks until the deadline for implementation. Matt Browne from the FSA covered key points and intentions of the [...]

Celent will publish soon a research updating a report published in 2007: The Build vs. Buy Debate. This report will draw the result of a survey we launched earlier this year in order to gather a perspective from insurers regarding the build or buy question for different types of system and components, that cover the [...]

The European Insurance team has been working hard over the Spring and Summer to produce one of our key reports Policy Administration Systems for General Insurers in Europe 2011. It’s a topic of great interest to insurers wanting to replace their core underwriting system, and vendors wanting to have a view of the competitive landscape. [...]