Looking Into Insurance

Our recent survey of insurance company in-plants may not have drawn a record response (just 28) but those who did reply run some very large operations. A third of them have more than 50 full-time employees. The median number of employees is 14 and the average is 50.

Digital printing tops the list of services provided by insurance company in-plants. This may not seem surprising in the digital age, but in our industry-wide survey a year ago, just 91 percent of all in-plants said they offered digital printing. Also notable is how high fulfillment is on the list of services. More than 60 percent are offering fulfillment—more than handle design, data center printing or wide-format printing.

While no respondents have earned FSC/SFI chain-of-custody certification, all say environmental issues are at least somewhat important. Here are some other notable figures (PDF version available for download at right):

79% — charge back for printing/copying/binding.
79% — compare their charges with outside printers.
57% — market their in-plants.
54% — provide training opportunities (beyond on-the-job training).
43% — insource work from customers outside the company.
36% — have the right of first refusal for all printing/copying.

• Big Budgets
The majority of insurance company in-plants have budgets in excess of $2 million.

Under $250,000 — 12%
$250,000 to $499,999 — 0%
$500,000 to $999,999 — 15%
$1 million to $1,999,999 — 15%
$2 million to $2,999,999 — 8%
$3 million to $4,999,999 — 12%
$5 million to $6,999,99 — 12%
$7 million to $9,999,9999 — 4%
More than $10 million — 22%

• Most Pay for Themselves
Here’s how insurance in-plants are supported.

Self- supporting — 40%
Funded — 30%
Combination — 30%

• Services Provided
Digital printing tops the list of services provided by insurance in-plants.

Percentage that Provide:
Digital Printing — 100%
Binding — 89%
Offset Printing — 75%
Mail: Outgoing — 68%
Fulfillment — 61%
Graphic Design — 57%
Data Center/IT Printing — 57%
Mail: Incoming — 43%
Wide-format Ink-jet Printing — 39%
Scanning for Archival — 29%
CD/DVD Duplicating — 29%
Copier Program Management — 21%

• VDP On the Rise.
In 2005, 75% of insurance in-plants produced variable data printing. Today, 89% are doing it. Those that do say 32 percent of their digital print jobs contain VDP. Here’s the type of VDP they provide.

Address information — 92%
Recipients’ names — 92%
Whole paragraphs of text — 50%
Color text/images — 38%
Images — 33%
Transpromo — 8%

• Web-to-Print
Almost 70% have an online ordering system.

An off-the-shelf system — 40.8%
A system we designed — 25.9%
Plan to add one — 18.5%
No plans to add — 14.8%

• Recent Expansion
In the past two years, more than 78% of insurance in-plants have expanded.

Large expansion — 7.14%
Moderate expansion — 71.43%
No expansion — 14.29%
Somewhat smaller than two years ago — 7.14%

• Digital Color
Almost 68% say they have installed a high-speed digital color printer. Here are some of the models being used:

Xerox iGen3 (90, 110) — 47%
Xerox DocuColor (5000, 7000, 8000) — 21%
Canon imagePRESS C7000VP — 5%
HP Indigo press — 5%
Kodak NexPress — 5%

• Color vs. Black-and-White
Most of the pages coming off of offset presses contain color, but on the digital side, black-and-white dominates.

Percentage of annual offset-printed pages:
Four-color or more — 42.25%
Two- or three-color — 25.9%
Black-and-white — 31.85%

Percentage of annual digitally printed pages:
Four-color or more — 33.4%
Two- or three-color — 5.4%
Black-and-white — 61.2%