Indian insurers to loosen strings for IT spends in 2016

MUMBAI, INDIA: Most Indian insurance companies expect to increase their IT budgets in 2016, and are expected to spend 140.8 billion rupees on IT products and services – a 9.6 per cent increase over 2015, according to Gartner Inc.

This forecast includes spending by insurers on internal IT (including personnel), hardware, software, external IT services and telecommunications.

“Our research shows that Indian insurers are prioritizing their technology investments for 2016 into digitalization, and particularly analytics capabilities,” said Derry Finkeldey, research director at Gartner. “They are primarily looking to digital to grow their businesses in the domestic market.”

This is driving continued strong growth in IT services, especially consulting services, and also enterprise software. Spending on IT services is forecast to reach 45.2 billion rupees, which is 32 per cent of all insurance IT spending. Enterprise software spending, which includes enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM), is forecast to grow 22 per cent in 2016, to a total of 948 million rupees.