Insurance companies which maintain traditional business models with inefficient operational cost structures face a bleak future, according to Peter Wyatt, MD of loss adjusters Wyatt Gallagher Bassett.

In a newsletter to clients, Mr Wyatt quoted the recent National Office for the Information Economy report on the insurance industry to support his contention that insurers have been slow to move away away from paper-based systems. Besides that, existing costs in the life and general insurance industries distribution chain are high.

Claims management is one of the large opportunities in e-commerce for integrated claims service providers, he said.

“The capital cost of implementing many of these initiatives will be large. But that is not to say that we in the [insurance] industry should not pursue many of these findings.”