Most CIO organisations including ones from the insurance industry are not ready for another pandemic or the next major business interruption event, according to a global survey of senior technology leaders.

More than three-quarters of CIOs in Australia who took part in the survey by Genpact, a professional services firm, believe their department is not fully prepared to help their companies withstand the next shock if it does happen.

Genpact Country Manager Richard Morgan says a major business interruption is defined as an event or on-coming risk that could affect the operations and day-to-day running of a business.

It could be physical, cyber, geographical or health and safety-related in nature such as the coronavirus pandemic, flood, bushfire or data breach, he told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

The mood from CIOs is more upbeat when asked if they see a bigger role post-pandemic. Slightly more than half agree strongly they are well positioned to support company growth when the public health crisis is over.

Mr Morgan says leading insurers in Australia are striking the right balance between necessary remediation in conduct risk as a result of the Hayne royal commission, and process and digital transformation.

“Simply ensuring that customers remain in the channel that their request originated from will increase digital channel adoption by over 50%,” he told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “The challenge for insurers is to ensure that middle and back office processes are engineered to fulfil digital requests from insurance customers.”

The findings from the survey in March are based on responses from CIOs and comparable C-level positions such as chief technology officers, chief digital officers and chief transformation officers in banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare and life sciences.

About 10% of the 500 respondents are from Australia.

The survey aims to assess the state of CIO priorities and leadership as well as key lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Australia, 24% of CIOs are grouped in the “pilot” category where they lead the way, driving the digital transformation journey strategically across core business functions.

About 56% are “co-pilots” partnering with business leaders to shape and deliver transformation while 20% are engineers, simply executing, not driving transformation.

According to Genpact, Australian CIOs who invested in automating processes, adopting advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence/machine learning (ML) adapted most successfully.

The report says the role of CIOs will continue to evolve, with most globally expecting their responsibility to expand.

“Almost all report to or interact with the CEO regularly,” the report said. “And many are exploiting the cloud, advanced analytics and automation.”

Click here to download the report.