The financial success of insurers depends on their ability to leverage the continually changing landscape of risk, regardless of whether those changes are minor or major.
In 2012 and subsequent years, insurers will find themselves competing in a dramatically changed landscape where success will require a significant redesign of strategies, business models, customer engagement, products, distribution channels, and the requisite supporting business operations. The transformation of the landscape of risk is being driven by stricter regulations, increasing fiscal stress on societies, more demanding customers, and a seemingly never-ending expansion of the digital domain which exerts pressure on insurers’ go-to-market strategies, business operations, and risk management practices. As an industry whose essence is entirely information, insurance companies must effectively and efficiently apply current and emerging technologies to best compete in the ever-changing landscape of risk.
The Insurance Technology research stream addresses six areas to help the insurance industry, and its supporting technology firms, consultancies, and ecosystem, to achieve their required strategic and operational objectives:
The insurance technology research will cover one or more of these three industry segments:
The insurance industry spends billions of dollars on technology to maintain the business, develop products, provide service to customers and channels, and remain in regulatory compliance – to list a few areas of IT spend. Our research will delve into insurers’ IT spending strategies and plans to make business more effective and more efficient.
Channels, whether they are face-to-face or direct, need to become increasingly more technology-enabled to make it easy for insurance agents, brokers, and financial advisors to conduct business with the insurance industry. Our research will investigate how insurers should be or are identifying and implementing a widening (and ore social media enabled) range of technology solutions to strengthen their channel management portfolio.
The more informed insurers have a competitive advantage over their competitors. Insurers must be able to use a wide spectrum of analytical capabilities, from business analytics to location intelligence to unstructured data analysis, to identify profitable growth areas, develop products faster than their competitors, provide better service to customers and channels, and remain in regulatory compliance. Our research will encompass the analytical capabilities insurers should use or are using to become better informed.
The insurance industry has never been thought of as providing a quality, compelling customer experience to prospects, policyholders or agents, brokers or financial advisors. Now that the marketplace is rapidly becoming a customer-pull environment – with increasing numbers of social media communities, blogs, and other digital outlets allowing customers to express their opinions about their interactions with insurers, channels, and products – the insurance industry has a mandate to improve how it engages customers, prospects, and channel members. Our research will encompass how insurers should use or are using technology to provide a compelling customer experience.
The insurance industry is one of the most regulated industries in the world. Whether from governments (at national or state levels, in the case of the US) or from the insurance industry itself, insurers must comply with increasingly more stringent regulations relating to capital adequacy, transparency, product filings, and rates. Our research will delve into the changing regulatory environment and what insurers should do or are doing with technology to comply with all levels of regulation.
Insurers face a multiplicity of challenges, from the marketplace rapidly becoming a mobile, digital marketplace to new regulations to more demanding customers, as well as new options to develop and deploy technology to support business initiatives. Our research will delve into the near-term future of business opportunities as well as how the space of technology vendors is changing and the implications for the insurance industry.
