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"Transformation is an expensive business" a senior broking executive once explained to The Insurance Insider after we revealed his firm had received a cash injection from its parent after a reorganisation had gone over budget.

But if anyone thought the business of revolutionising an international broker is expensive, then technological transformation in global insurance markets seems to be in a league of its own.
Last week The Insurance Insider revealed that loss-making market electronic trading business
Ri3K was looking at takeover approaches from two new investor groups.

However, perhaps the most interesting fact to emerge from the story is that, since its launch in 2000, Ri3k is thought to have spent over £40mn in developing its technology.

But despite the cash and nearly a decade of development, sources suggest that both potential purchasers value the reinsurance placement network at a maximum of £10mn.

We should not judge Ri3k too harshly - at least it is still in the game and could yet make it across the line into profitability and market-wide acceptance. In contrast, the international insurance market is littered with failed IT initiatives that have been consigned to a gilded scrapheap.

For those with a memory long enough, the list could include the failed EPS and World Insurance Network ventures of the late 1990s. But the most notorious must be the Kinnect project at Lloyd's that burned through more than £70mn in four years before folding in 2006, after attracting only a small minority take-up from the market and creating no legacy value.

Following Kinnect, Lloyd's has pursued a much more cautious facilitating role in driving technological change, seeking to gain market buy-in to purely "out of the box" solutions.

The market, meanwhile, has continued its grand tradition of IT cost and time overruns. The latest of these is the London Market Group's flagship eAccounting project, which despite a 2009 implementation target had still not seen a live release in February of this year and is now only targeting full use by Q4 2011.

The current situation is clearly unsatisfactory for all - technology and solutions providers can still haemorrhage money but at the same time clients are unhappy with the service they receive.

Given these circumstances, is there any wonder that the industry's traditional scepticism towards all things technological remains alive and well?