Since 1996, Deloitte specialists have published the Life Insurance Operations Benchmarking Study (LIONS), which provides comparative analysis widely used by top insurance executives to benchmark expenses for operations and information technology.

This year we are publishing highlights from the latest LIONS in the form of this executive summary report. Key findings include:

• Insurers have not fully leveraged eService and call center capabilities. Lower-cost companies have unit costs that are 33 percent lower than the average; they are attaining these benefits through the use of Web and interactive voice response (IVR) technologies.
• Business process outsourcing is still gaining traction with insurers.
• Lowest-cost insurers have unit costs that are 20 percent lower than the average. Low-cost companies realize savings of about $30 million per $1 billion of total annual premium.

Learn more in the below report.