Insurance growth crippled by legacy tech despite 82% claiming leadership

Short-term operational panics actively kill long-term strategic planning for local carriers.

Nearly all insurers in Singapore (98%) said outdated technology is constraining business growth, even as 82% claim to be ahead in digital adoption, according to research from Clearwater Analytics.

Around 70% of executives said their companies remain focused on short-term challenges rather than longer-term strategic issues, whilst half reported difficulties hiring staff to manage legacy systems. Around 8% flagged that this is a ‘serious problem’ whilst 28% of the executives suggested the problem was relatively minor.

Cultural resistance was highlighted by 96% of respondents, who said staff are reluctant to adopt new operating models and systems, and 72% pointed to a lack of workforce diversity as a factor limiting innovation.

Meanwhile, insurers in Singapore are bracing for a surge in M&A activity in their domestic markets. Almost all (94%) predict a rise in domestic M&A over the next three years, and around 10% predict a dramatic increase.

The survey was conducted with Singapore-based insurance asset management executives at firms with total assets under management of $1.04t.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia