Some 37% of insurance firms are unhappy with their financial planning tools, according to research from business services provider Accountagility.
It also found that 57% of insurance companies thought their planning tool did not have enough features to cope with the volume of data sets produced by their business, including internal functions like expense allocation. This was cited by 80% of respondents as their greatest challenge.
Accountagility said the results show that firms needed a planning tool that could accommodate multiple functions and different sets of data.
Its chief executive Robert Gothan said: "The insurance sector is no stranger to the need to process and plan for large quantities of data. With the sector constantly affected by changes in regulation, it is vital that firms are using planning tools that can help them adapt to new policies, including any changes to Solvency II following the government's inquiry.
"With a third of firms in this sector unhappy with their current planning tools, many companies will be feeling the need to consider their options and look for more innovative and automated options."
Gotham expressed surprise that a large number of businesses still relied on spreadsheets, which he said were "only really suitable for a singular purpose, since they cannot handle multiple users or large amounts of information".