Digital Insurance Ecosystem – Disruptive Technologies and Innovation

Technology is transforming the insurance industry requiring a new niche of insurance products and services. Insurers will need a laser focus on how they will remain relevant, as well as profitable, in an increasingly tech-centric and connected society. It is crucial to assess disruption across the insurance ecosystem and determines how it affects the whole environment.

Disruption

Disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.

Insurers through accelerator programs aimed specifically at insurance tech entrepreneurs along with enthusiasts and accessible talent could unwind vast potential in InsurTech.

The insurance industry is perhaps facing more disruption than any other industry. Many incumbent players feel the exponential growth of digitization posing threats to their industry, particularly the entry of innovative firms or FinTech / InsurTech, which is an economic industry, composed of companies that use technology to make financial services more efficient and the purpose is to disrupt incumbent financial systems and corporations that rely less on software.

Examples of disruptive technology includes Fintech/InsurTech, Robotics, Cognitive Automation, Robo-Agents/Advisors, Chatbot.

Analytics

Organizations of all sizes are seeking to master, monetize, and measure their use of data. Business analytics specialists look inside this data to help create and refine strategies for delivering data-driven insights that yield informed and differentiating business decisions.

Business analytics services also provide customized data analytics tools that are ready for deployment to immediately improve an organization’s analytics capabilities.

Building on analytics successes, leaders are beginning to take steps toward connecting these successes to create the insight-driven organization.

The main areas that can be improved are Predictive Analytics, Customer Analytics, Operational Analytics, Big Data, and Advanced Analytics.

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is arguably one of the hottest technology trends of today. This refers to a world of intelligent, connected devices that generate data for automating business processes and enabling new services.

Experts believe that the insurance industry will undergo a marked change with the growing adoption of IoT.

New business models, revenue streams and prospects will emerge. Functions core to the industry including risk assessment, sales processes for insurance products will be reinvented. Partnerships with smart device manufacturers, analytics providers, telecom players, software firms and even competitors will enable insurers to create competitive advantages, new revenue sources and effective, innovative business models.

Examples: Personal wearables, Smarthomes, Smart-businesses, Telematics and black boxes, IoT-based coverage

Mobility

Mobility is more than just the latest step function in tech innovation. It is a fast-moving engine that is fundamentally reshaping operating models, business models, and marketplaces. Mobility also includes GPS enabled programs, mobile apps and online market places linking insurers with customers.

Insurers are driving mobility transformation in their businesses by identifying use cases that can be mobile enabled. Utilizing the true power of mobility requires insurers to enable speedy, high quality communications for customers, field agents, and the management.

Firms that proactively adopt mobile technology enable customers to do business on-the-fly and are seeing improvement in customer loyalty.

Mobility also helps the enterprise provide rich on-site data to employees including claims adjusters besides powerful decision making tools to the management.

The future of Mobility, which would upend the existing models of insurance, includes Sensor-controlled cars, Self-driving cars, Mobile apps, Tablet/Mobile based Solutions and Drones.

Tech Transformation

Technology transformation is not just about upgrading, it is about establishing the right portfolio of technology to run the business most effectively.

Tech Transformation incorporates client issues and sub-issues around digital and emerging technology (cloud, social computing), technology Initiatives, cyber risk and comparison websites.

It also recognizes promising commercial potentials in bringing forth efficiencies in current products as well as in new markets opportunities.

Digital technologies, such as social media and telematics, will continue to transform the systems insurers, reinsurers and brokers use. The connected world will alter the insurance market landscape throughout its value chain. It is imperative insurers identify tech trends, plan, partner and react fast by incorporating innovation into the enterprise culture in order to survive and thrive.

The main important trends include Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning Tools, Automated underwriting/pricing, Cloud Computing and Digital Technologies.

New emerging paradigm: the Transformation of the Actuarial Profession

As this shift unfold, the actuarial professional is changing dramatically – opening opportunities for actuaries to take on dynamic, new business roles.

A wider range of actuarial tasks, empowering actuaries to shift their focus to higher value activities are encompassing more resources. This pivot towards more advanced strategic analysis – requiring sophisticated cognitive ability, communications savvy, and business knowledge – is the engine driving the rise of the shift in the Actuarial Profession.

These new technologies are transforming actuarial tasks in fundamental ways:

Facilitating data gathering and preparation – Technologies efficiently prepare data for analysis, including finding, cleaning, organizing, and parsing data. In the future, actuaries will spend less time on these manual process tasks and more time generating insights that drive business performance.

Performing analysis and computation – Technologies are programmed to perform rote calculations that, while complicated, require lower cognitive skills. This area has seen the most automation to date, and the use of these powerful, brute force-computing tools will only become more powerful as models are consolidated, refined, span a wider spectrum of actuarial processes, and are shared across user groups.

Improving reporting and analytics – Technologies can automate actuarial reporting based on rule sets, machine learning, and natural language generation capabilities. This will enable actuaries to focus on fine‑turning reports, developing insights from data, and communicating these insights to business leaders.

Defining the Actuary of the Future

While some express uncertainty about these shifts, it should be seen a once‑in‑a‑lifetime opportunity.

Actuaries who embrace this change will elevate their capabilities and strengthen their value to their organizations.

It starts with a shift in mindset from data steward to business strategist. Rather than simply producing numbers, actuaries must learn how to harness data to generate business insights, serving as the organization’s bridge between technology and strategy.

To make this jump, actuaries must augment their fluency with numbers with a deeper understanding of the business. This means applying actuarial skills not simply to traditional tasks such as compliance and risk management, but to broader challenges:

• Analyzing the market challenges their organizations face.
• Helping organizations decide what products to sell and the best channels to distribute products.
• Providing insights about profitability, maximizing returns for shareholders, and entering the right markets at the right prices.

Giovanni Di Marco – Partner Deloitte Consulting | Actuarial, Rewards and Analytics