(Length: 6 pages)

April 7, 2006

How Insurers Should Pick Business Rules Engines

by Marc Cecere

with John R. Rymer, Bruce D. Temkin, Adele Sage

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Insurance firms are increasingly interested in automating business processes. To make this move, they'll need to choose between embedded and independent rules engines. The embedded engines that are included with applications like policy administration and claims processing are tightly integrated with these applications, cost less, and provide simpler development environments. Independent rules platforms, on the other hand, cost more, provide richer development tools, and are rapidly adding insurance-specific capabilities. During the next three years, we expect several of the independent platforms to match the ease of use and integration capabilities of the embedded engines. As a result, insurers should bias their near-term decision toward an embedded rules engine but make plans to move gradually toward enterprisewide deployment of independent platforms.