More than half of Europe’s insurers and reinsurers say obtaining data in the right place at the right time is the biggest challenge in analytics.

About 33% complain finding the right people to carry out the work is a key challenge, while 29% say external data sources can be an issue.

The findings come from an FC Business Intelligence study of 165 insurance organisations.

Feeding customer insights into the business is a challenge for 29% of respondents, and 15% say board support for analytics initiatives can be difficult to obtain.

Some 23% of insurers get external data from industry bodies, while 18% source it from demographic information and only 16% get it from other insurers.

Analytics is mostly carried out by underwriters (in 27% of respondents), CFOs and actuaries (both 26%).

Not surprisingly, given who is driving the projects, half the companies surveyed say underwriting will benefit most from the information, followed by pricing (45%) and claims (36%).

About 72% of respondents agree analytics is “the biggest game-changer for the insurance industry” this year. Some 63% of insurers plan to increase their spending on analytics, despite only 26% having seen good results from it.