Growth for workers' compensation insurers is down, but experts at research and advisory firm Novarica say firms are strategizing with updated technology to stay competitive.

Novarica released a new report, Business and Technology Trends for 2010: Workers' Compensation, highlighting recent technology initiatives by workers compensation insurers and top issues for 2010-2011.

"New business growth is down due to increased business failures, and fewer new businesses being started. Rising unemployment is eroding payrolls and the workers comp's exposure base," notes Karlyn Carnahan, a principal in Novarica's insurance practice and lead author of the study. "Competitive pressures drive price declines which eat into premiums above and beyond recession-induced exposure losses. All of this makes the marketplace intensely competitive, and technology-enabled performance is the key to competition."

Novarica's research finds that workers compensation insurers are focusing on five key areas in their technology strategies:

Claims. Carriers who are using modern systems are rapidly gaining competitive advantages by improved efficiencies in claims handling, and improved data leading to better outcome management.

Business Intelligence. Predictive analytics tools for those who have sufficient data are becoming more popular, but these depend on having a solid data infrastructure in place.

Portals. Extending functionality to the agents and the consumers continues to rise in importance. It's less and less about differentiation and more and more just the price to pay to be in the game.

Policy. Investments in core policy administration systems are key to operational flexibility in a rapidly changing marketplace

Document Management. Despite the move towards structured data, paper and electronic documents are still the predominant information storage and transmission medium for many insurers, and gaining control over this area is critically important.

The report provides an overview of business trends and data, analyzes the players in the marketplace, and provides examples of over 20 recent technology initiatives by named workers compensation insurers.

Instant Insights /

Workers&#039; comp insurers go high-tech to stay competitive

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Workers' comp insurers go high-tech to stay competitive