LeapComp - Sales Performance Management Blog

Insurance companies are often a world apart in incentive compensation. People are often being compensated differently than in other industries, hierarchies and contract structures are usually more complex, compliance requirements are often “crazy” and even the terminology is pretty different. Specific insurance-industry requirements have led many solutions to focus only on that vertical, and many other more generic solutions are adding insurance functionality and gaining more knowledge of that industry.

Earlier in December, Gartner released a MarketScope paper about Insurance ICM applications, profiling the 7 leading vendors in that industry.

Some interesting points mentioned in the paper:

• 16 new ICM deals signed with life insurers globally, and 8 deals for property and casualty (P&C) insurers in 2008
• Overall adoption of ICM solutions for insurance will remain steady through 2010, with 18 to 22 new deployments projected during the next 12 months for life insurers and P&C insurers globally
• North America will continue to be the strongest geographic segment
• When evaluating solutions, insurers should not discount the importance of the upgrade process.
• Our rating for ICM applications for insurers remains Promising for another year

What’s interesting from this paper is that many of the solutions are so industry specific that I haven’t really talked about them on LeapComp. I talked a bit about some of them in the OpenSymmetry SPM Guide and I have an online demo recording for two of them, but I will probably try to review the missing solutions within the next few months.

So this year, 3 vendors got a positive rating: Callidus Software, SunGard, and Versata. The other companies profiled were CSC (Exceed), CSC (PerformancePlus), MajescoMastek, McCamish Systems, and SAP.

Another note in the report mentions “Varicent Software is the next likely entrant into the insurance vertical market, provided it has a successful 2Q09 implementation for a recently acquired Tier 1 insurer. Although Varicent did not meet the inclusion criteria for this year’s MarketScope, insurers should expect Varicent to build on its success and gain insurance market share.”  That’s another company which I have been talking quite a bit so far.

Just like with the “regular” incentive comp industry, with all the consolidation happening in the insurance industry in 08/09, with the increased level of interest in ICM solutions, the number of good options available and the forecasted upcoming major insurance ICM projects, it will be interesting to see how the vendors stack up next year.