Adoption of Cloud Services and Performance of Insurance Firms in Kenya

Abstract

Traditionally many organizations used to render their services in-house from on-premises environments using on-premises software that was installed locally on the organizations own computers and servers . Organizations nowadays are outsourcing their IT computing needs to cloud providers for a per user pay service which translates to an operational expenditure and with little or no capital expenditure. The headache of deploying, building, maintaining, upgrading and operating the data centers becomes the sole responsibility of the cloud vendor, and this gives the organization flexibility and choice without having to be locked to one vendor thus avoiding vendor lock in. Insurance industry has always been in the business of collecting data since its inception. Data management in Insurance is crucial because the data collected has impact on revenue, growth and profitability. Data and information gathered in the claims process through email or other forms will help in guiding the claims team in deciding whether the claim is valid or not and the amount to be settled. Review of claims over a given time will assist the insurer in deciding whether to make such payments. 40% of payment of claims here in Kenya are made up of payments that are considered to be fraudulent. Insurance companies that will strategically position themselves for cloud computing transformation will reap big in leaps and bounds and avoid payment of fraudulent claims which eats into revenue. By tackling the challenges of on-premises legacy systems and applications as well the adoption of cloud computing services and its benefits, industry leaders will gain insights as to whether to adopt cloud computing strategies for their organizations or decide to stick to traditional on-premises line of business systems and application software.