Aite Group - As the insurance industry recovers, so too will spending on portfolio systems; vendors waiting for the rebound have been enhancing their offerings.

Boston, MA, August 4, 2010 – A new report from Aite Group profiles select portfolio management and accounting (“portfolio systems”) vendors with an established presence in the insurance market. The third in a series of Aite Group reports on portfolio systems, this report defines the unique attributes of insurance portfolio systems.

Insurance firms tend to be large entities working in a global environment; each global location has its own accounting requirements, meaning that the portfolio systems supporting them must offer multi-basis accounting. Insurance firms are also complex entities with multiple business lines and product groups, and therefore require a structured chart of accounts. The portfolio system must provide a hierarchy structure to support insurance firms seeking to view, analyze, and report on various segmentations of the business by location, region, legal entity, product, portfolio, etc.

“Insurance companies have an array of portfolio-systems products to choose from,” says Denise Valentine, senior analyst with Aite Group and author of this report. “While the overall market environment has been relatively weak for core infrastructure replacement over the past two years, vendors have had no choice but to bide their time awaiting a market recovery. For those vendors in a position to do so, it has been a time of solution enhancement; many have developed a full roadmap and are fast at work. Though firms have a tendency to stick with the same vendors year after year, now might be the time to look at competitors’ offerings.”

The report profiles and compares 12 products from nine vendors including IGEFI, Linedata (Icon and Chorus), Misys, OpenLink, Pendo Systems, Princeton Financial, SimCorp, SS&C Technologies (CAMRA, MAXIMIS, Debt & Derivatives), and Thomson Reuters. For solutions included in this report, insurance companies comprise more than 5% of the solution’s client base (factoring direct sales only). The report includes a list of additional vendors that service the insurance industry to a lesser extent.

About Aite Group

Aite Group is a leading independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology and regulatory issues and their impact on the financial services industry. It was founded by leading industry experts in Banking and Securities & Investments. Aite Group brings together a team of business strategy, technology and regulatory experts to deliver comprehensive, timely, and actionable advice to financial institutions and technology vendors. It seeks to become a true partner, advisor, and catalyst by exchanging ideas and challenging basic assumptions to ensure that our clients always stay one step ahead of the competition.