Fintech, regtech and the role of compliance in 2020

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

The ebb and flow of attitudes on the adoption and use of technology has evolving ramifications for financial services firms and their compliance functions, according to the findings of the Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence’s fourth annual survey on fintech, regtech and the role of compliance. This year’s survey results represent the views and experiences of almost 400 compliance and risk practitioners worldwide.

During the lifetime of the report it has had nearly 2,000 responses and been downloaded nearly 10,000 times by firms, risk and compliance practitioners, regulators, consultancies, law firms and global systemically-important financial institutions (G-SIFIs). The report also highlights the shifting role of the regulator and concerns about best or better practice approaches to tackle the rise of cyber risk. The findings have become a trusted source of insight for firms, regulators and their advisers alike. They are intended to help regulated firms with planning, resourcing and direction, and to allow them to benchmark whether their resources, skills, strategy and expectations are in line with those of the wider industry. As with previous reports, regional and G-SIFI results are split out where they highlight any particular trend. One challenge for firms is the need to acquire the skill sets which are essential if they are to reap the expected benefits of technological solutions. Equally, regulators and policymakers need to have the appropriate up-todate skillsets to enable consistent oversight of the use of technology in financial services. Firms themselves, and G-SIFIs in particular, have made substantial investments in skills and the upgrading of legacy systems.

Key findings

  • The involvement of risk and compliance functions in their firm’s approach to fintech, regtech and insurtech continues to evolve. Some 65% of firms reported their risk and compliance function was either fully engaged and consulted or had some involvement (59% in prior year). In the G-SIFI population 69% reported at least some involvement with those reporting their compliance function as being fully engaged and consulted almost doubling from 13% in 2018, to 25% in 2019. There is an even more positive picture presented on increasing board involvement in the firm’s approach to fintech, regtech and insurtech. A total of 62% of firms reported their board being fully engaged and consulted or having some involvement, up from 54% in the prior year. For G-SIFIs 85% reported their board being fully engaged and consulted or having some involvement, up from 56% in the prior year. In particular, 37% of G-SIFIs reported their board was fully engaged with and consulted on the firm’s approach to fintech, regtech and insurtech, up from 13% in the prior year.
  • Opinion on technological innovation and digital disruption has fluctuated in the past couple of years. Overall, the level of positivity about fintech innovation and digital disruption has increased, after a slight dip in 2018. In 2019, 83% of firms have a positive view of fintech innovation (23% extremely positive, 60% mostly positive), compared with 74% in 2018 and 83% in 2017. In the G-SIFI population the positivity rises to 92%. There are regional variations, with the UK and Europe reporting a 97% positive view at one end going down to a 75% positive view in the United States.
  • There has been a similar ebb and flow of opinion about regtech innovation and digital disruption although at lower levels. A total of 77% reported either an extremely or mostly positive view, up from 71% in the prior year. For G-SIFIs 81% had a positive view, up from 76% in the prior year.
  • G-SIFIs have reported a significant investment in specialist skills for both risk and compliance functions and at board level. Some 21% of G-SIFIs reported they had invested in and/or appointed people with specialist skills to the board to accommodate developments in fintech, insurtech and regtech, up from 2% in the prior year. This means in turn 79% of G-SIFIs have not completed their work in this area, which is potentially disturbing. Similarly, 25% of G-SIFIs have invested in specialist skills for the risk and compliance functions, up from 9% in the prior year. In the wider population 10% reported investing in specialist skills at board level and 16% reported investing in specialist skills for the risk and compliance function. A quarter (26%) reported they have yet to invest in specialist skills for the risk and compliance function, but they know it is needed (32% for board-level specialist skills). Again, these figures suggest 75% of G-SIFIs have not fully upgraded their risk and compliance functions, rising to 84% in the wider population.
  • The greatest financial technology challenge firms expect to face in the next 12 months have changed in nature since the previous survey, with the top three challenges cited as keeping up with technological advancements; budgetary limitations, lack of investment and cost; and data security. In prior years, the biggest challenges related to the need to upgrade legacy systems and processes as well as budgetary limitations, the adequacy and availability of skilled resources together with the need for cyber resilience. In terms of the greatest benefits expected to be seen from financial technology in the next 12 months the top three are a strengthening of operational efficiency, improved services for customers and greater business opportunities.
  • G-SIFIs are leading the way on the implementation of regtech solutions. Some 14% of G-SIFIs have implemented a regtech solution, up from 9% in the prior year with 75% (52% in the prior year) reporting they have either fully or partially implemented a regtech solution to help manage compliance. In the wider population, 17% reported implementing a regtech solution, up from 8% in the prior year. The 2018 numbers overall showed a profound dip from 2017 when 29% of G-SIFIs and 30% of firms reported implementing a regtech solution, perhaps highlighting that early adoption of regtech solutions was less than smooth.
  • Where firms have not yet deployed fintech or regtech solutions various reasons were cited as to what was holding them back. Significantly, one third of firms cited lack of investment; a similar number of firms pointed to a lack of in-house skills and information security/data protection concerns. Some 14% of  firms and 12% of G-SIFIs reported they had taken a deliberate strategic decision not to deploy fintech or regtech solutions yet.
  • There continues to be substantial variation in the overall budget available for regtech solutions. A total of 38% of firms (31% in prior year) reported that the expected budget would grow in the coming year, however, 31% said they lack a budget for regtech (25% in the prior year). For G-SIFIs 48% expected the budget to grow (36% in prior year), with 12% reporting no budget for regtech solutions (6% in the prior year).

Focus : Challenges for firms

Technological challenges for firms come in all shapes and sizes. There is the potential, marketplace changing, challenge posed by the rise of bigtech. There is also the evolving approach of regulators and the need to invest in specialist skill sets. Lastly, there is the emerging need to keep up with technological advances themselves.

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The challenges for firms have moved on. In the first three years of the report the biggest financial technology challenge facing firms was that of the need to upgrade legacy systems and processes. This year the top three challenges are expected to be the need to keep up with technology advancements; perceived budgetary limitations, lack of investment and cost, and then data security.

Focus : Cyber risk

Cyber risk and the need to be cyber-resilient is a major challenge for financial services firms which are targets for hackers. They must be prepared and be able to respond to any kind of cyber incident. Good customer outcomes will be under threat if cyber resilience fails.

One of the most prevalent forms of cyber attack is ransomware. There are different types of ransomware, all of which will seek to prevent a firm or an individual from using their IT systems and will ask for something (usually payment of a ransom) to be done before access will be restored. Even then, there is no guarantee that paying the fine or acceding to the ransomware attacker’s demands will restore full access to all IT systems, data or files. Many firms have found that critical files often containing client data have been encrypted as part of an attack and large amounts of money are demanded for restoration. Encryption is in this instance used as a weapon and it can be practically impossible to reverse-engineer the encryption or “crack” the files without the original encryption key – which cyber attackers deliberately withhold. What was previously viewed often as an IT problem has become a significant issue for risk and compliance functions. The regulatory stance is typified by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) which has said its goal is to “help firms become more resilient to cyber attacks, while ensuring that consumers are protected and market integrity is upheld”. Regulators do not expect firms to be impervious but do expect cyber risk management to become a core competency.

Good and better practice on defending against ransomware attacks Risk and compliance officers do not need to become technological experts overnight but must ensure cyber risks are effectively managed and reported on within their firm’s corporate governance framework. For some compliance officers, cyber risk may be well outside their comfort zone but there is evidence that simple steps implemented rigorously can go a long way towards protecting a firm and its customers. Any basic cyber-security hygiene aimed at protecting businesses from ransomware attacks should make full use of the wide range of resources available on cyber resilience, IT security and protecting against malware attacks. The UK National Cyber Security Centre has produced some practical guidance on how organizations can protect themselves in cyberspace, which it updates regularly. Indeed, the NCSC’s 10 steps to cyber security have now been adopted by most of the FTSE350.

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Closing thoughts

The financial services industry has much to gain from the effective implementation of fintech, regtech and insurtech but practical reality is there are numerous challenges to overcome before the potential benefits can be realised. Investment continues to be needed in skill sets, systems upgrades and cyber resilience before firms can deliver technological innovation without endangering good customer outcomes.

An added complication is the business need to innovate while looking over one shoulder at the threat posed by bigtech. There are also concerns for solution providers. The last year has seen many technology start-ups going bust and far fewer new start-ups getting off the ground – an apparent parallel, at least on the surface, to the bubble that was around dotcom. Solutions need to be practical, providers need to be careful not to over promise and under deliver and above all developments should be aimed at genuine problems and not be solutions looking for a problem. There are nevertheless potentially substantive benefits to be gained from implementing fintech, regtech and insurtech solutions. For risk and compliance functions much of the benefit may come from the ability to automate rote processes with increasing accuracy and speed. Indeed, when 900 respondents to the 10th annual cost of compliance survey report were asked to look into their crystal balls and predict the biggest change for compliance in the next 10 years, the largest response was automation.

Technology and its failure or misuse is increasingly being linked to the personal liability and accountability of senior managers. Chief executives, board members and other senior individuals will be held accountable for failures in technology and should therefore ensure their skill set is up-to-date. Regulators and politicians alike have shown themselves to be increasingly intolerant of senior managers who fail to take the expected reasonable steps with regards to any lack of resilience in their firm’s technology.

This year’s findings suggest firms may find it beneficial to consider:

  • Is fintech (and regtech) properly considered as part of the firm’s strategy? It is important for regtech especially not to be forgotten about in strategic terms: a systemic failure arising from a regtech solution has great capacity to cause problems for the firm – the UK FCA’s actions on regulatory reporting, among other things, are an indicator of this.
  • Not all firms seem to have fully tackled the governance challenge fintech implies: greater specialist skills may be needed at board level and in risk and compliance functions.
  • Lack of in-house skills was given as a main reason for failing to develop fintech or regtech solutions. It is heartening that firms understand the need for those skills. As fintech/regtech becomes mainstream, however, firms may be pressed into developing such solutions. Is there a plan in place to plug the skills gap?
  • Only 22% of firms reported that they need more resources to evaluate, understand and deploy fintech/ regtech solutions. This suggests 78% of firms are unduly relaxed about the resources needed in the second line of defence to ensure fintech/regtech solutions are properly monitored. This may be a correct conclusion, but seems potentially bullish.

Click here to access Thomson Reuters’ Survey Results

Incumbents and InsurTechs must embrace each other’s unique strengths and work together

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

Executive summary

New challenges, changing business dynamics have set off a tectonic shift in the insurance industry

  • Customer expectations are evolving, offers are becoming more innovative, and new players are making their presence known.
  • Fundamental and significant challenges will require insurers’ immediate and considered attention.
  • As a result of these changing dynamics, incumbents and InsurTechs agree that collaboration with other industry players is necessary to create an integrated portfolio of offerings.

Insurers must support a platform that serves a broad spectrum of customer needs

  • The future marketplace will showcase a bouquet of offerings that caters to customers’ financial and non-financial needs.
  • Insurers need a structured approach to marketplace development that includes proper identification of customer preferences and relevant offerings, evaluation of best-fit partners, and an effective GTM strategy.
  • Today’s operating model will undergo a fundamental transformation as part of the inevitable path forward.

Experience-led digital offerings and seamless collaboration with ecosystem players will drive marketplace success

  • Insurers will need to tear down internal silos, seamlessly connect with ecosystem players, and be more inventive.
  • Our Inventive Insurer profile includes key characteristics:
    • intelligent insurer,
    • open insurer,
    • deep customer,
    • and product agility.

Incumbent-InsurTech collaboration can shore up competencies in preparation for the future

  • InsurTechs’ unique capabilities and agility make them ideal partners for incumbents aiming to carve out a substantive role in the new marketplace.
  • A successful holistic collaboration will focus on long-term benefits.

New ecosystem roles will evolve as the industry transitions toward the marketplace model

  • Industry players must decide how to successfully and profitably contribute to the new ecosystem based on their most compelling competencies, as well as market needs and the external environment.

There’s no looking back for today’s digitally-empowered consumers

Throughout the past decade, as smart technology tools became mainstream, consumer interaction with the world changed dramatically. Changing lifestyles, behavior, and preferences have created a digital-age paradigm. As smartphones and the internet unlock information and decision power, interconnectivity, personalization, and seamless omnichannel access have become must-haves.

So, what does this mean for insurers?

Policyholders seek new offerings: Traditional insurance policies may not fully meet customers’ changing needs and desire for add-on services, personalization, and flexible offerings. In fact, for nearly half of policyholders, the decision to continue with their insurer is influenced by the availability of these features and benefits, according to the World Insurance Report (WIR) 2019.1

The demand for digital transaction channels is up: The popularity of digital channels is gradually growing. More than half of insurance customers (nearly 52%) interviewed as part of the WIR 2018 placed high importance on the mobile and internet or a website channel for conducting insurance transactions.

Simplicity is the rationale behind genuinely digital products

Digital channels work best when insurers streamline and standardize products and processes so customers easily understand features and benefits and can make direct purchases online with ease. In short, insurers must simplify offerings to create genuinely
digital products.

  • Easy to understand: Policy details should be redesigned and reformatted for straightforward interpretation so customers can quickly make a buy/ no-buy decision. For example, Berkshire Hathaway’s Insurance Group (BiBerk) launched a comprehensive insurance product for small businesses that combines multiple coverages. Dubbed THREE, the new product is three-pages long and links coverage for workers compensation, liability (including general liability, errors and omissions, and cyber), property, and auto.
  • Automated processes: Straight-through processing and other ease-of-use tools can simplify underwriting, claims processing, and more across the value chain. Cake Insure, a subsidiary of Colorado-based Pinnacol Assurance, launched in late 2017 with an algorithm that produces a bindable quote in less than a minute and a bound policy in fewer than five minutes for small businesses seeking workers’ compensation insurance. New York-based property and casualty InsurTech Lemonade uses artificial intelligence to automate claims processing. Lemonade showcases a 2016 case in which it crossreferenced a claim against a user’s policy, ran 18 anti-fraud algorithms, approved the claim, and sent wiring instructions to the bank in three seconds to demonstrate ease of use.
  • Straightforward policy wording: Descriptions of policy coverage and expenses (which ones are payable and which do not qualify) must be explained clearly in everyday language. Similarly, insurance industry players should work together to standardize definitions, exclusions, and processes.
  • Interactive customer education: Gamification, interactive videos, and social channels are ways to educate customers about risks, their need for coverage, and policy details. Interaction can also improve customer engagement and experience.

The marketplace of the future can holistically focus on customer needs

HomeFlix is a virtual assistant offering renters and homeowners insurance underwritten by Zurich Connect, the digital arm of Zurich Italy, and powered by on-demand digital broker Yolo, a Milan-based InsurTech. In addition to insurance coverage, the policy, introduced in July 2019, offers laundry service – washed and ironed after a few days and paid directly on delivery. Access to concierge maintenance services such as plumbing and electric also is available. Next, HomeFlix plans home delivery, babysitting, and cleaning services.

New York-based Generali Global Assistance (a division of Italy’s Generali Group, which provides travel insurance-related services) strategically partnered with San Francisco-based rideshare company Lyft in late 2017 to improve customer service and contain costs for clientele of its insurance companies and multinational corporations. Later, Lyft
collaborated with CareLinx, a US professional caregiver marketplace that helps find, hire, manage and pay caregivers online, to create CareRides, a door-to-door transportation service for special-needs individuals in 50 US metro areas. Generali Global Assistance also partnered with CareLinx to provide value-added services for existing policyholders in times of need.

The marketplace of the future can offer emerging-risk coverage

Working with Cisco, Apple, and Aon, Allianz launched a comprehensive cyber insurance product for businesses in early 2018. The product includes a solution comprised of cyber-resilience evaluation services from Aon, secure technologies from Cisco and Apple, and options for enhanced cyber insurance coverage from Allianz. The product aims to help a broader range of organizations manage and protect themselves better from cyber risks associated with ransomware and malware-related threats.

The marketplace of the future can deliver simple to understand, easy-access offerings

Berlin-based startup FRIDAY offers innovative, digital automotive insurance with features like kilometeraccurate billing, the option to terminate at month’s end, and paperless administration. The InsurTech’s technologies and partnerships include:

  • Telematics support from the BMW CarData platform and from TankTaler, which tracks vehicle location as well as data such as battery voltage, mileage, and other statistics
  • Automotive services through the mobility hub of ATU, a German chain of vehicle repair franchises
  • Drivy, a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace that enables consumers to lease vehicles from private individuals
  • Friendsurance, a peer-to-peer InsurTech that pays out a percentage to customers who do not use (or use very little) annual insurance also sells FRIDAY policies

Prudential Singapore and StarHub partnered to create FastTrackTrade (FTT), Singapore’s first digital trade platform for small and midsized business (SMBs) that uses blockchain technology. FTT helps SMBs find business partners and distributors, buy and sell goods, track shipments, receive and make payments, access financing, and buy insurance via a single platform. FinTech startup Cités Gestion developed the pioneering platform with funding from Prudential.

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Structure supports success

Insurer success in the future marketplace will rely on a structured approach (see Figure 3).

  • Understanding customer preferences and conceptualizing product portfolios: Insurers can tap new data sources such as social media channels and use behavioral analytics for better understanding and more accurate estimation of their customer’s preferences and risk profile. With a deeper understanding of customers, they can conceptualize personalized product portfolios for each customer segment.
  • Recruiting the right partners: Once the product portfolio is finalized, insurers should look for partners that align with their business objectives and strategic vision. Cultural fit, ease of integration of systems, and seamless channels of communication are key success factors.
  • Structuring the offerings portfolio: Insurers should closely collaborate with partners while assembling their portfolio. A winning product/service mix offers a hyper-personalized one-stop solution for all the needs of the customer.
  • A compelling go-to-market strategy: Insurers should be able to communicate the value of the marketplace by touting human-centric offerings that customers find simple to understand and easy to access.
  • Capturing feedback: Through advanced analysis of sales data, direct customer input, social media, etc., insurers can capture feedback about their offerings. The process should be continuous rather than on an ad-hoc basis. More importantly, the input should be immediately acted upon to enhance current products or to conceptualize a new product.

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To realize the full potential of the structured approach, four fundamental shifts in the current operating model are critical

For an insurer to realize the full potential of the structured approach and ensuring the successful creation of the marketplace of the future, four fundamental shifts in the current operating model are critical (see Figure 4). The importance of these areas is borne out by the research. For example:

  1. Experience: More than 70% of insurers and InsurTechs said a focus on holistic risk solutions for customers was critical to establishing a future-state insurance marketplace.
  2. Data: More than 70% said advanced data management capabilities are critical.
  3. Partnerships: 90% of InsurTechs said partnerships were critical while 70% of incumbents said the same. Both insurers and InsurTechs have a hearty appetite for collaboration with other sectors, such as healthcare providers and players from the travel, transportation, and hospitality space (see Figure 5).
  4. Shared access: However, an emerging area in which views are evolving is the transition to a shared economy. Here, less than 40% of established insurers and InsurTechs say they consider shared ownership of assets to be critical.

Industry players should understand that the four shifts – focus on experience, data, partnership, and shared access – are interrelated and critical for partnering with other entities to develop bundled offerings. Concentrating on one at the expense of others may stymie the overall efficiency of the marketplace.

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Digital maturity does not match aspiration

While insurers realize the importance of these fundamental shifts, there is a significant gap between their expectations and their current digital maturity. Lack of digital maturity is the biggest concern for incumbents. While 68% of insurers said they believe partnerships are critical, only 32% are currently collaborating with ecosystem partners (see Figure 6).

Less than 40% of insurers have a holistic digital transformation strategy and are collaborating with ecosystem players to provide value-added services. Only 11% of insurers say they leverage open architecture, which is critical for working with other industry players.

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Experience-led digital offerings and seamless collaboration with ecosystem players will drive marketplace success

We call firms prepared to excel in the future marketplace Inventive Insurers because they have strategically updated their product portfolios, operating models, and distribution methods. They have outlined their distinctive capabilities as well as their competency gaps and are ready to deliver end-to-end solutions in the manner customers prefer.

Pragmatic assessment (and subsequent enhancement) of a firm’s digital maturity is critical to connecting with ecosystem players seamlessly. Figure 7 shows the steps companies need to take to establish the marketplace of the future.

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1. Prioritize digital agility

The critical first step in the future marketplace journey is boosting digital agility. The more quickly initiatives are implemented, the more quickly firms will enhance their digital maturity and actively participate within a connected ecosystem. Insurers must holistically adopt these critical capabilities to optimize their digital agility and seamlessly connect with partners to develop digitallyintegrated ecosystems (see Figure 8).

  • Real-time data gathering
  • Advanced analytics
  • Re-engineering complex processes and automating them

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2. Build an integrated ecosystem

Seamless collaboration between insurers and their strategic partners is the backbone of a digitally integrated ecosystem. As new players enter the insurance value chain (aggregators, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), one-stop policy management apps, and third parties such as repair stores), incumbents must strengthen their position through strategic partnerships.

Our proposed digitally-integrated ecosystem seamlessly interconnects insurers with customers and partners to enable the efficient flow of information and services (see Figure 9).

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In the digitally-integrated ecosystem, customers can access insurers over various channels through extended multi-device, multi-platform, and mobility offerings. Digital integration with partners will play a crucial role as insurers seek to increase their reach and provide customers with convenient and seamless services.

Integration with aggregators and intermediaries offers insurers a choice of distribution channels. As insurers connect with individual customers through devices, real-time data can be captured and used to provide personalized offerings and value-added services.

Insurers will move beyond traditional touchpoints to become their customers’ constant risk control advisory and partner. For that to happen, however, insurers will need to join forces with third-party vendors for efficient claims management and payout, and with OEMs for real-time customer data.

APIs, cloud-based storage, and blockchain can foster insurance ecosystem integration by enabling the seamless and secure transfer of data between diverse systems. A digitally-integrated ecosystem – both within and outside the organization – will support the real-time, personalized services that customers already demand. Digital mastery can benefit top- and bottom lines and propel insurers forward.

Grasping the art of teamwork with close ecosystem players – and relevant offerings based on core capabilities – will lay the groundwork for insurers to partner profitably.

3. Create tomorrow’s marketplace

Firms must develop Inventive Insurer competencies to contribute to the successful development of tomorrow’s marketplace. These competencies include intelligent processes, open platforms, customer centricity, and an innovative mindset among team members ( see Figure 10).

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Intelligent insurer. Automation, analytics, and artificial intelligence can prioritize customer experience within all operations.

  • Process efficiencies can support top-notch service with quick turnaround times.
  • Analytical competencies help insurers understand customer needs and act swiftly.
  • Robust digital governance provides monitoring and ensures compliance within today’s dynamic regulatory environment.

Open insurers leverage open platforms to build an ecosystem of partners through seamless collaboration with third parties and enable firms to participate in the value chain of third parties. Insurers with open platforms can access and integrate new data streams to cater to customers’ evolving needs, reaching them in the way they prefer via new distribution channels. Modern platform with open architecture for providing bouquet of offerings also allow firms to take a fail-fast approach to product development and innovate at a faster pace.

Deep customer competencies allow insurers to leverage data and channels for enhancing the customer experience across all touchpoints. Deep customer insights generated using advanced analytics and AI enable insurers to keep the customer at the center of all decisions.

Product agility is crucial for insurers to create new products at a faster pace and gain a competitive edge from an increased speed-to-market. Creative culture and ability to innovate at scale are critical components for achieving product agility. A creative culture
encourages novel thinking from employees and spurs openness to change.

Innovation labs and design thinking can encourage a fresh approach, especially within cultures that are hard-wired with conventional processes and culture.

Leadership support and vision are also critical. While Inventive Insurer status may be an aspirational future state, each firm’s journey is unique. An open platform used as a sandbox is an excellent place to begin developing new competencies and learning how to innovate at scale. Inventive Insurers create digital, experience-led offerings by collaborating seamlessly with other ecosystem players.

Incumbents and InsurTechs will benefit from strategic collaboration

For the most part, the industry sees InsurTech collaboration only as a means to drive growth and transform the customer experience. For example, 84% of insurers and 80% of InsurTechs say they are focusing on “developing new offerings.”

However, when it comes to the critical building blocks for the new insurance marketplace – such as developing holistic technology infrastructure and advanced data management capabilities – there are significant gaps in the expectations of insurers and InsurTechs. For example, fewer than 40% of incumbent insurers want to build holistic technology infrastructure by collaborating with InsurTech firms, while more than 60% of InsurTechs wish to work with insurers to create such a foundation.

What’s more, while data security remains a crucial concern when establishing partnerships with other industries, only around 10% of incumbents and 25% of InsurTechs say they want to focus collaborative efforts on data security.

Industry players should focus on a holistic approach while venturing into an insurer-InsurTech collaboration to prepare for the future and consider tactical plans for quick wins that may offer short-term benefits.

External partners can facilitate incumbent-InsurTech collaboration

After clearly outlining collaboration objectives, insurers must select a partner. The World InsurTech Report 2018 took a deep dive into the InsurTech landscape and offered ways in which incumbents can assess the success potential of short-to-medium term partnerships with InsurTech firms as well as longterm relationship feasibility. Finding a partner that can address technology capability gaps may require specialized third-party support.

Incumbents and InsurTechs can optimize their structured collaborative efforts by keeping four guiding pillars in mind: People, Finance, Business, and Technology (Figure 13).

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People (The right individuals in the best-fit positions): Employees are a firm’s most essential assets when it comes to driving innovation, growth, expansion, and fruitful collaboration. Both partnering entities must be flexible and strive for a balance between the hierarchical nature of many traditional insurers and the flat organizational structure favored by InsurTechs.

Finance (Allocate optimal capital, realistically forecast returns): Without a defined investment and revenue model, it may be difficult to articulate a compelling value proposition. Participants need adequate capital to invest in the partnership and a proven revenue generating model to maintain positive cash flow in the not-too-distant future.

Business (Early traction, measurable success): Business traction, a proven business model, customer adoption, and value creation are must-meet goals for any potential collaboration. A new business model should solve the needs and challenges that were difficult to tackle independently. A collaborative partnership should produce a value proposition with quantifiable results.

Technology (Collaboration tools and technologies): Technology tools should be secure and enable frictionless collaboration, as well as scalability. Partner systems should securely integrate with the help of technology. Accessed information must be accurate, timely, and be regulatorily compliant. It should be scalable without affecting current systems.

New ecosystem roles will evolve as the industry transitions toward the marketplace model

As the insurance industry advances, new specialist roles are developing. In addition to the traditional integrated business role, new functions include that of Supplier, Aggregator, and Orchestrator. Close collaboration will enable incumbents and InsurTechs to maximize opportunities in each.

These roles are not business-model exclusive but business-case specific. Each ecosystem entity may mix and match positions depending on the business model in play (see Figure 15).

Established insurers and InsurTechs can also play multiple roles within an ecosystem. For example, a firm can act as both supplier and orchestrator. Similarly, one firm may be a supplier in an ecosystem, but be an orchestrator in another ecosystem.

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Click here to access Cap Gemini’s entire report

 

Can Data and Technology Support the Insurance Industry to Regain Lost Relevance?

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

Since the start of the Third Industrial Revolution in the 1980s, the world has changed in many different ways:

  • rapid introduction and adoption of technological innovation (global internet; social networks; mobile technologies; evolving payment solutions; data availability);
  • new economic realities (volatile and shorter economic cycles; interconnected financial climate; under utilisation of assets);
  • structural shifts in society’s values (desire for community; generational altruism; active citizenship);
  • and demographic readjustment (increasing population; urbanization; longer life expectancy; millennials in the work force).

While these changes have been happening, the Insurance industry has seemingly preferred to operate in a closed environment oblivious to much of the impact these changes could bring:

  • Resistance to change,
  • Failure to meet changing customer demands
  • Decrease in the importance of attritional risks

has led the Insurance industry to reduce its relevance.

However

  • the availability of data,
  • the introduction of new capital providers,
  • the impact of new business models emerging from the sharing economy
  • and the challenge of InsurTechs

are affecting the industry complacency. Collectively, these factors are creating the perfect storm for the incumbents allowing them to re-evaluate their preference for maintaining the status quo. There is an ever increasing expectation from the industry to be more innovative and deliver a vastly improved customer experience.

As data and emerging technology are accelerating the need for change, they are also opening doors. The industry is at cross roads where it can either choose to regain relevance by adapting to the new world order or it can continue to decline. Should it choose the latter, it could expose the US$ 5 trillion market to approaches from large technology firms and manufacturers who have the access to customers, transformational capabilities and more than enough capital to fill the void left by the traditional players.

Insurance industry is slow to evolve

The Insurance industry has historically lacked an appetite to evolve and has shown reluctance in adopting industry-wide changes. A number of key elements, have created high barriers to entry. New entrants have found it difficult to challenge the status quo and lack appetite to win market share from incumbents with significantly large balance sheets. Such high barriers have kept the impact of disruption to minimal, allowing the industry to stay complacent even when most other industries have undergone significant structural shifts. In many ways ‘Darwin’ has not been at work.

  • A complex value chain

The Insurance industry started with a simple value chain involving four roles – the insured, a broker who advices the insured, an underwriter who prices the risk and an investor who provides the capital to secure the risk. Over centuries, the chain has expanded to include multiple other roles essential in helping the spreading of large risks across a broad investor community, as shown below.

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These new parties have benefitted the chain by providing expertise, access to customers, secure handling of transactions, arbitration in case of disputes and spreading of risk coverage across multiple partners. However, this has also resulted in added complexities and inefficiencies as each risk now undergoes multiple handovers.

While a longer value chain offers opportunities to new entrants to attack at multiple points, the added complexities and the importance of scale reduces opportunities to cause real disruption.

  • Stringent regulations

Insurance is one of the highest regulated industries in the world. And since the global financial crisis of last decade, when governments across the globe bailed out several financial service providers including insurers, the focus on capital adequacy and customer safety has increased manifold.

While a proactive regulatory regime ensures a healthy operating standard with potential measures in place to avoid another financial meltdown, multiple surveys have highlighted the implications of increased regulatory burden, leading to increased costs and limited product innovation.

  • Scale and volatility of losses

The true value of any insurance product is realised when the customer receives payments for incurred losses. This means that insurers must maintain enough reserves at any time to meet these claims.

Over the years volatility in high severity losses have made it difficult for insurers to accurately predict the required capital levels.

In addition, regulators now require insurers to be adequately capitalised with enough buffer to sustain extreme losses for even the lowest probability of occurrence (for example 1-in-100 years event or 1-in-200 years event). This puts additional pressure on the insurers to maintain bulky balance sheets.

On the other hand, a large capital base gives established insurers advantage of scale and limits growth opportunities for smaller industry players/new entrants.

  • Need for proprietary and historical data

Accurate pricing of the risk is key to survival in the industry. The insurers (specifically underwriters supported by actuaries) rely excessively on experience and statistical analysis to determine the premiums that they would be willing to take to cover the risk.

Access to correct and historical data is of chief importance and has been a key differentiating factor amongst insurers. Since the dawn of Third Industrial Revolution in the 1980s, insurers have been involved in a race to acquire, store and develop proprietary databases that allow them to price risks better than the competitors.

The collection of these extensive databases by incumbent insurers have given them immense benefits over new entrants that do not typically have similar datasets. Additionally, the incumbents have continued to add on to these databases through an unchallenged continuation of underwriting– which has further widened the gap for new entrants.

Struggling to meet customer needs

Despite years of existence, the Insurance industry has failed to keep up with the demand for risk coverage. For example the economic value of losses from all natural disasters has consistently been more than the insured value of losses by an average multiple of 3x-4x.

The gap is not limited to natural disasters. As highlighted by Aon’s Global Risk Management Survey 2019, multiple top risks sighted by customers are either uninsurable or partially insurable leading to significant supply gap.

Aon2

Six of the top 10 risks, including Damage to reputation/brand and Cyber, require better data and analytical insights to achieve fully effective risk transfer. However, current capabilities are primarily applied to drive better pricing and claims certainty across existing risk pools, and have not yet reached their full potential for emerging risks.

This inability to meet customer need has been driven by both an expensive model (for most risks only 60% of premiums paid are actually returned to the insured) and a lack of innovation. Historically, the need for long data trends meant insurance products always trailed emerging risks.

Status Quo is being challenged

While the industry has been losing relevance, it is now facing new challenges which are creating pressure for change. While these challenges are impacting the incumbents they also provide the potential for insurance to regain its key role in supporting innovation. Creating opportunity for lower costs and new innovations.

The insurance customer landscape has changed considerably: traditional property and casualty losses are no longer the only main risks that corporations are focused on mitigating. The importance of intellectual property and brand/reputation in value creation is leading to a realignment in the customer risk profile.

Value in the corporate world is no longer driven by physical/ tangible assets. As technology has advanced, it has led to the growth of intangibles assets in the form of intellectual property. The graph below shows that 84% of market capitalization in 2018 was driven by intangible assets. While the five largest corporations in 1975 were manufacturing companies (IBM; Exxon Mobil; P&G; GE; 3M), that has completely changed in 2018 as the first five positions were occupied by Tech companies (Apple; Alphabet; Microsoft; Amazon; Facebook). Yet, organizations are only able to secure coverage to insure a relatively small portion of their intangible assets (15%) compared to insurance coverage for legacy tangible assets (59%).

Aon3

This shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the Insurance industry. The ability to provide coverage for intangible assets would enable insurance to regain relevance and support innovation and investment. Until it can, its importance is likely to remain muted.

InsurTech

The Insurance industry has had traditionally manual processes, and has been a paper driven industry with huge inefficiencies. While customers´ needs are evolving at an unprecedented quick pace, the incumbents´ large legacy systems and naturally conservative approach, make them slow to reach the market with new products and an improved customer experience.

InsurTechs are companies that use technology to make the traditional insurance value chain more efficient. They are beginning to reshape the Insurance industry by targeting particular value pools or services in the sector, rather than seek to provide end-to-end solutions.

InsurTechs have seen more than US$ 11 billion of funding since 2015, and the volume in 2018 is expected to reach US$ 3,8 billion (FT PARTNERS). While Insurtechs were originally viewed as a disruptive force competing with traditional insurers to gain market share, there is a growing collaboration and partnership with the incumbent players. Most of them are launched to help solve legacy insurer problems across the organization, from general inefficiency in operations to enhancing underwriting, distribution, and claims functions, especially in consumer facing insurance. More recently they are also moving into the commercial segment focusing on loss prevention and efficiency. (CATLIN, T. et al. 2017). Incumbent insurers have managed to leverage InsurTechs to speed up innovation (DELOITTE, 2018: 11). From a funding perspective most of the US$ 2.6 billion that went into the InsurTechs in the first nine months of 2018 came from incumbent Insurers. (MOODY`S, 2018: 6).

The accelerated use of technology and digital capabilities again represents both a challenge for the industry but also an opportunity to innovate and develop more efficient products and services.

Data and technology with potential to transform

Traditionally, the Insurance industry has used proprietary historic data to match the demand from risk owners with the supply from capital providers. Focusing on relative simplistic regression analysis as the main approach.

While robust, this approach is reliant on a long data history and limits insurers ability to move into new areas. Increasingly the transformative power of data and technology is changing this relationship, as shown in the graph below. While underwriting data used to be in the hands of the incumbents only, emerging technologies, new analytical techniques and huge increases in sensors are enabling usage of new forms of data that are much more freely accessible. In addition, these technologies are supporting instant delivery of in-depth analytics that can potentially lead to significant efficiency gains and new types of products.

Aon4

  • Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence – Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Cognitive Intelligence (CI) – is know as any system that can perceive the world around it, analyse and understand the information it receives, take actions based on that understanding and improve its own performance by learning from what happended.

Artificial Intelligence not only gives the opportunity to reduce costs (process automation; reduction of cycle times; free up of thousands of people hours) but improves accuracy that results in better data quality. For insurers this offers significant potential to both enable new ways of interpreting data and understanding risks. As well as reducing the costs of many critical processes such as claims assessment.

This dual impact of better understanding and lower costs is highly valuable. Insurers’ spend on cognitive/artificial intelligence technologies is expected to rise 48% globally on an annual basis over five years, reaching US$ 1.4 billion by 2021. (DELOITTE, 2017: 15).

  • Internet of Things

The Internet of Things refers to the digitization of objects around us. It works by embedding advanced hardware (e.g. sensors, cameras and meters) into everyday objects and even people themselves, linking those objects further to online networks. (MOODY`S, 2018: 11).

For example, connected devices in the homes such as water leakage detectors, smoke alarms, C02 readers and sophisticated home security systems will support prevention and reduction in losses from water damage, fire and burglary, respectively.

The Internet of Things has the potential to significantly change the way that risks are underwritten. The ability to have access to data in ‘real time’ will provide greater precision in the pricing of risk and also help insurers to respond better to the evolving customer needs. Consider the example of home insurance; customers will be forced to resconsider the decision to buy home insurance as packaged currently when their house is already monitored 24/7 for break-ins and the sensors are constantly monitoring the appliances to prevent fires. The insurers could utilise the same data to develop customised insurance policies depending on usage and scope of sensors.

The Internet of Things applies equally to wearable devices with embedded sensors for tracking vital statistics to improve the health, safety and productivity of individuals at work. It is predicted that the connected health market will be worth US$ 61 billion by 2026.

The Internet of Things offers the Insurance industry an opportunity to reinvent itself and to move from simply insuring against risk to helping customers protect the properties / health. This integration of insurance with products through live sensor data can revolutionise how insurance is embedded into our every day lives.

  • Blockchain

All disruptive technologies have a “tipping point” – the exact moment when it moves from early adopters to widespread acceptance. Just as it was for Google in the late 1990s and smartphones in the 2000s, could we be approaching the tipping point for the next big disruptive technology – blockchain?

Essentially, blockchain is a shared digital ledger technology that allows a continuously growing number of transactions to be recorded and verified electronically over a network of computers. It holds an immutable record of data, stored locally by each party to remove the barrier of trust. Through smart contacts, blockchain can enable automation of tasks for more efficient processing. It made its debut in 2009 as the system used to track dealing in the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and, since then, organisations around the world have spotted blockchain’s potential to transform operations.

Most industries are currently experimenting with blockchain to identify and prove successful use cases to embrace the technology in business as usual. IDC, a leading market intelligence firm, expects the spend on blockchain to increase from US$ 1.8 billion in 2018 to US$ 11.7 billion in 2022 at a growth rate of 60%.

With all the aforementioned benefits, blockchain also has potential to impact the Insurance industry. It can help Insurers reduce operational and administrative costs through automated verification of policyholders, auditable registration of claims and data from third parties, underwriting of small contracts and automation of claims procedures. Equally, it can help reduce the fraud which would contribute to reduce total cost.

In an industry where ‘trust’ is critical, the ability to have guaranteed contracts, with claims certainty will help the take-up of insurance in new areas. BCG estimates that blockchain could drastically improve the end-to-end processing of a motor insurance policy and any claims arising thereof as shown in the graph below.

Aon5

Conclusion

The relevance of insurance, which has declined over the last few decades, after peaking in the early 1980s, is set to increase again:

  • Big shifts in insurance needs, both in the commercial and consumer segments,
  • New sources of cheap capital,
  • Prevelance of cheap and accessible data and the technology to automate and analyse

will transform the Insurance industry.

Not only is this important for insurers, it is also important for all of us. Insurance is the grease behind investment and innovation. The long term decline in the Insurance´s industry ability to reduce risk could be a significant impediment on future growth.

However we believe that the reversal of this trend will mean that insurance can once again grow in its importance of protecting our key investments and activities.

Click here to access Aon’s White Paper

 

EIOPA reviews the use of Big Data Analytics in motor and health insurance

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

Data processing has historically been at the very core of the business of insurance undertakings, which is rooted strongly in data-led statistical analysis. Data has always been collected and processed to

  • inform underwriting decisions,
  • price policies,
  • settle claims
  • and prevent fraud.

There has long been a pursuit of more granular data-sets and predictive models, such that the relevance of Big Data Analytics (BDA) for the sector is no surprise.

In view of this, and as a follow-up of the Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) cross-sectorial report on the use of Big Data by financial institutions,1 the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) decided to launch a thematic review on the use of BDA specifically by insurance firms. The aim is to gather further empirical evidence on the benefits and risks arising from BDA. To keep the exercise proportionate, the focus was limited to motor and health insurance lines of business. The thematic review was officially launched during the summer of 2018.

A total of 222 insurance undertakings and intermediaries from 28 jurisdictions have participated in the thematic review. The input collected from insurance undertakings represents approximately 60% of the total gross written premiums (GWP) of the motor and health insurance lines of business in the respective national markets, and it includes input from both incumbents and start-ups. In addition, EIOPA has collected input from its Members and Observers, i.e. national competent authorities (NCAs) from the European Economic Area, and from two consumers associations.

The thematic review has revealed a strong trend towards increasingly data-driven business models throughout the insurance value chain in motor and health insurance:

  • Traditional data sources such as demographic data or exposure data are increasingly combined (not replaced) with new sources like online media data or telematics data, providing greater granularity and frequency of information about consumer’s characteristics, behaviour and lifestyles. This enables the development of increasingly tailored products and services and more accurate risk assessments.

EIOPA BDA 1

  • The use of data outsourced from third-party data vendors and their corresponding algorithms used to calculate credit scores, driving scores, claims scores, etc. is relatively extended and this information can be used in technical models.

EIOPA BDA 2

  • BDA enables the development of new rating factors, leading to smaller risk pools and a larger number of them. Most rating factors have a causal link while others are perceived as being a proxy for other risk factors or wealth / price elasticity of demand.
  • BDA tools such as such as artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) are already actively used by 31% of firms, and another 24% are at a proof of concept stage. Models based on these tools are often cor-relational and not causative, and they are primarily used on pricing and underwriting and claims management.

EIOPA BDA 3

  • Cloud computing services, which reportedly represent a key enabler of agility and data analytics, are already used by 33% of insurance firms, with a further 32% saying they will be moving to the cloud over the next 3 years. Data security and consumer protection are key concerns of this outsourcing activity.
  • Up take of usage-based insurance products will gradually continue in the following years, influenced by developments such as increasingly connected cars, health wearable devices or the introduction of 5G mobile technology. Roboadvisors and specially chatbots are also gaining momentum within consumer product and service journeys.

EIOPA BDA 4

EIOPA BDA 5

  • There is no evidence as yet that an increasing granularity of risk assessments is causing exclusion issues for high-risk consumers, although firms expect the impact of BDA to increase in the years to come.

In view of the evidence gathered from the different stake-holders, EIOPA considers that there are many opportunities arising from BDA, both for the insurance industry as well as for consumers. However, and although insurance firms generally already have in place or are developing sound data governance arrangements, there are also risks arising from BDA that need to be further addressed in practice. Some of these risks are not new, but their significance is amplified in the context of BDA. This is particularly the case regarding ethical issues with the fairness of the use of BDA, as well as regarding the

  • accuracy,
  • transparency,
  • auditability,
  • and explainability

of certain BDA tools such as AI and ML.

Going forward, in 2019 EIOPA’s InsurTech Task Force will conduct further work in these two key areas in collaboration with the industry, academia, consumer associations and other relevant stakeholders. The work being developed by the Joint Committee of the ESAs on AI as well as in other international fora will also be taken into account. EIOPA will also explore third-party data vendor issues, including transparency in the use of rating factors in the context of the EU-US insurance dialogue. Furthermore, EIOPA will develop guidelines on the use of cloud computing by insurance firms and will start a new workstream assessing new business models and ecosystems arising from InsurTech. EIOPA will also continue its on-going work in the area of cyber insurance and cyber security risks.

Click here to access EIOPA’s detailed Big Data Report

Overcome Digital Transformation Distress

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

Digital has become one of the most over-loaded words in the English language, meaning very different things in different contexts. Insurers have been digital since the first policy was recorded on magnetic drum or tape in the 1960s. Oddly enough, insurers now lag considerably behind other industries in their digital maturity and stage of adoption.

Why insurers lag in digital strategy

So many factors go into understanding why insurers trail in developing and implementing a modern digital strategy. At this point, most insurers have developed a digital footprint and deliver varying levels of engagement with their customers and partners, including some direct access to policy information and service. The transactional nature of some Personal and Commercial (P&C) lines make this process more straightforward. However, for Life, Accident and Health (LA&H) carriers, especially those providing Group Employee Benefits, it’s a more complex problem with additional parties involved and customization of product and service at the plan level, requiring more detailed policy information and flexibility requirements in service options. Combined with the legacy technology platforms most carriers still employ, this makes direct self-service options more difficult to implement requiring more manual intervention which ultimately erodes customer satisfaction. Ironically, the prevalent underlying key stumbling block to implementing a next generation digital strategy is insurers’ digital legacy.

Digital Transformation Distress

According to McKinsey, Insurtechs are focusing more on P&C than LA&H but there is significant activity in distribution and new business-related activities, which falls squarely in the digital arena. In a recent multi-country study by Couchbase across multiple industries including insurance,

  • 64% of respondents say if they can’t keep up with digital innovation they will go out of business or be absorbed;
  • 95% say digital transformation seems an insurmountable task and
  • 83% felt they would face being fired if such a project failed.

Despite the challenges, LA&H insurers are putting more comprehensive digital strategies into place and technology vendors servicing this market must think beyond providing basic digital engagement capabilities to supporting a more complete vision of digitally-enabled business.

Digital Enagement and Flexibility

Leading SaaS core insurance system providers believe insurance business leaders need a platform that can provide a level of digital engagement and service equal to their customers’ expectations for all service providers. To enable this, there must be an underlying OpenCore system that can ensure accurate, open and flexible product development, deployment and service to serve a rapidly changing market.

  • Digital Engagement is a critical element of a complete strategy and the most visible. In the Group and Employee Benefits market, there are multiple stakeholders in the value chain with differing roles and digital engagement should be role-based, whether it is transactional or purely informational.
  • Flexibility is required within the business model. The chain of carrier(s), brokers, benefit administration companies (ben admin), enrollment vendors, employers, and employees must provide rapid and accurate straight through processing and be flexible enough to change out any given player in the chain, based on the deal.

Legacy systems are proving inadequate

The traditional approach to support these two key needs of the value chain is

  • either to provide an end-to-end portal solution driven from the core system architecture
  • or a standardized data feed interface between the core system and the next link in the value chain.

The problem with these two approaches is that they are inadequate. Why?

The first approach of end-to-end portal solution is not feasible given current and future insurance market directions around multi-carrier plans and value-added services from benefit admin providers. The standardized data feed interface can work but invariably leads to a great deal of custom IT interface work, even when employing industry standards like the emerging LIMRA-backed Workplace Benefits standard. This proves especially difficult when there are broad systems of engagement in play from companies like Salesforce.com that are used in call centers and broad community portals.

An Engagement Model that Works

Leading insurance technology vendors are proving that OpenCore is the best approach applying a role-based scenario to defining digital engagement requirements for the core system. This tactic provides a layered architecture to suit those roles and the engagement path needed for the particular customer. The way that might evolve could include a large carrier that uses a system of engagement for their customer service reps (CSR) and works with a broker, enrollment vendor and larger employer in the following scenarios:

  • The insurance specialist who installs and manages the details of a case works directly with the core system interface, designed for experts.
  • The CSR who works for the carrier and answers basic questions about the case for the employer or employee and who interacts with the system of engagement, which is tied to the core system in real-time via an app written by the core system vendor specifically for that platform.
  • The broker who does case and member inquiries and updates through a broker portal provided by the carrier with role-based access into the core system.
  • The enrollment vendor uses industry standard real time APIs and batch file transfers to exchange data directly with the carrier’s core system. The larger employer exchanges transactions through API or data feed to the HCM system and has direct access to the carrier’s core system through a role-based portal designed for the exchange process.
  • The employee has access to the employers Human Capital Management (HCM) employee portal and the option to go directly to the carrier for deeper interactions such as claims or absences, or portability issues. The interaction with the carrier is via portal, mobile, voice or SMS depending on the employee’s preference or circumstance.

Insurance technology companies that provide a layered digital engagement architecture, with core systems capabilities supporting role-based APIs sets that support both digital engagement applications and are available for customers and partner DIY projects, enables the insurer to achieve the most flexible, stable and modern digital experience.

OpenCore

Click here to access Fineos’ White Paper

The Customer Journey of a Lifetime: Step-by-Step Modernisation to Maximise Retention

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

Customer experience is the insurer’s latest hot topic. Improving it at existing touchpoints and finding new opportunities to deliver it beyond purchase, renewal and claims dominate discussions. McKinsey found in the B2B sector that improved customer experience lowered churn by 15%, increased win rate from 20% to 40% and lowered costs to serve by up to 50%.

But understanding how to deliver great insurance customer experience, whether on mobile, in a contact centre or at a repair shop means far more than finessing an individual point of interaction. How the customer experiences each interaction and how it colours past and future interactions is critical to building a successful customer experience.

In other words, if you don’t give your customer the best journey, they’ll never arrive at the desired destination.

In this paper we look at the latest research supporting customer journey analysis and speak to three insurance executives who are putting this strategy at the heart of their customer experience and engagement policy. Progress towards the optimal customer journey is examined in the following stages:

  1. Proof points for customer journey analysis
  2. Embedding effective customer tracking
  3. Solid data collection practice
  4. Assessing and enhancing the availability of information
  5. Upskilling the organisation to manage the journey
  6. Discovering and mitigating pain points in the customer journey
  7. An atmosphere of continuous improvement

Proof points for customer journey analysis

Customer journey analysis and optimisation is so important because of the multiple channels and external influences involved in the buying process. So much can happen between intent and purchase. No-one is exempt. Google and Ipsos found that 90% of people move between devices in a sequential fashion to accomplish a goal. In online shopping, 61% of internet users and 80% of online millennials start shopping on one device but finish on another.” This is a pretty simplistic view. If we turn to research by user experience research house, GfK, the customer journey looks even more convoluted:

CX Survey

From this infographic, we note that most insurance customers use branded search but also go across around eight touchpoints including social media and email. Only 14% don’t do any research and for those who do, most will research online covering around five different websites. Further research on the insurer journey from GfK found that hardly any purchasers bothered with word of mouth (5%) but price comparison sites (PCS) wield a strong influence (26%).

This diagram only relates to the insurance purchase journey. There are many more influences on customer retention such as claims journey, customer engagement campaigns (increasingly popular under the influence of internet of things (IoT) technology).

Embedding effective customer tracking

The business case for journey analysis established, insurers need to make sure they are tracking all the essential touchpoints.

ERGO Group AG’s Head of Customer and Sales Service Health, Dr. Carsten Rahlf explains his process: “If a phone number is saved in the database we can see the customer’s profile upon calling, their historic interaction points, so we know where he is in the process. If he went to the doctor, paid him and wants to be reimbursed, also we can see when and how he submitted his bills. He may have sent them by post or used the app. He and we can see through the online portal that his request has been accepted and the customer and the agent can then track it to see if it has been executed.”

Wesleyan’s Group Head of Marketing Robin Gibson is in the middle of bringing CRM data into a Microsoft Dynamics system to improve their single view of the customer – vital to make any sense of customer tracking data. Executives looking to follow his lead should be aware it is a long-term project: “We spent the last three years on integration, migrating all the data into new CRM systems. The first part is to allow financial consultants and the customer to jointly have a single view of finances. »

« The next part is to allow customers to self-serve on their devices. Next, we need to put marketing plugins into the system to simulate interactions and use the database to find new customers.” He adds that a manageable, clean source of customer information is vital to comply with May 2018’s GDPR legislation which requires explicit data consent ongoing. It’s clear that tracking the customer journey means not just focusing on points of customer interaction such as cookies on a website or calls to a call centre but also looking internally to see what processes are helping or hindering that customer journey.

This will never be an exact science. Explaining where tracking begins and ends in MyCustomer, SEO expert Martin Calvert admits a degree of arbitrariness is expected “The start and end points of a customer journey are always going to be debatable. Does the journey ultimately start when they see one of your brand’s adverts years ago…does it end after they’ve bought their last product from you in their 80s?”

The learning is to track what you can and hunt out two specific areas:

  • one, where gaps in the customer journey appear
  • and two, where customers appear to experience pain points that are unaccountable – so far.

To get reliable pictures of this, insurers need to access as much data as possible.

Customer Journey

Click here to access InsuranceNexus’ White Paper

By investing heavily in start-ups and technology, (re)insurance companies appear to have assumed a semblance of control over the InsurTech revolution

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

Who Benefits from Modularization?

With technology moving forward at an unprecedented pace, incumbents are increasingly electing to outsource functions to highly specialized new entrants, renting evolving modules of technology that can be tailored to suit their individual needs. Though this approach may be more cost effective, it further fuels the question of whether incumbents will allow value in the industry to shift towards new entrants. In time, market participants will come to understand which module in the chain generates the most value. It is plausible that automation in distribution will shift value towards efficiency of internal processes that support cutting-edge modeling and underwriting engines.

InsT0

The State of InsurTech

InsurTech funding volume increased 36% year-over-year in 2017, demonstrating that technology driven innovation remains a core focus area for (re)insurance companies and investors heading into 2018. However, perhaps contrary to many of the opinions championed in editorial and press coverage of the InsurTech sector, further analysis of the growing number of start-ups successfully attracting capital from (re)insurers and financial investors reveals that the majority of InsurTech ventures are not focused on exiling incumbents by disrupting the pressured insurance value chain. According to research from McKinsey & Company,

  • 61% of InsurTech companies aim to enable the value chain,
  • 30% are attempting to disintermediate incumbents from customers
  • 9% are targeting full scale value chain disruption.

Has the hype surrounding InsurTech fostered unjustified fear from overly defensive incumbents?

We have taken this analysis a step further by tracking funding volume from strategic (re)insurers versus financial investors for InsurTechs focused on enabling the value chain relative to their counterparts attempting to disintermediate customers from incumbents or disrupt the value chain altogether and found that 65% of strategic (re)insurer InsurTech investments have been concentrated in companies enabling the value chain, with only 35% of incumbent investments going to start-ups with more disruptive business models. What does it mean? While recognizing the subjective nature of surmising an early stage company’s ultimate industry application at maturity from its initial focus, we attribute this phenomenon to the tendency of incumbents to, consciously or subconsciously, encourage development of less perceptibly threatening innovation while avoiding more radical, potentially intimidating technologies and applications.

Recognizing that this behavior may allow incumbents to preserve a palatable status quo, it should be considered in the context in which individual investments are evaluated – on the basis of expected benefits relative to potential risk. We have listed several benefits that InsurTechs offer to incumbents :

InsT1

Segmenting the InsurTech Universe

As InsurTech start-ups continue to emerge across the various components of the insurance value chain and business lines, incumbents and investors are evaluating opportunities to deploy these applications in the insurance industry today and in the future. To simplify the process of identifying useful and potentially transformational technologies and applications, we have endeavored to segment the increasingly broad universe of InsurTech companies by their core function into four categories:

  1. Product & Distribution
  2. Business Process Enhancement
  3. Data & Analytics
  4. Claims Management

This exercise is complicated by the tendency of companies to operate across multiple functions, so significant professional judgment was used in determining the assignment for each company. A summary of the criteria used to determine placement is listed below. On the following pages, we have included market maps to provide a high level perspective of the number of players in each category, as well as a competitive assessment of each subsector and our expectations for each market going forward. Selected companies in each category, ranked by the amount of funding they have raised to date, are listed, followed by more detailed overviews and Q&A with selected representative companies from each subsector.

InsT2

Click here to access WTW’s detailed birefing

Technology Driven Value Generation in Insurance

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

The evolution of financial technology (FinTech) is reshaping the broader financial services industry. Technology is now disrupting the traditionally more conservative insurance industry, as the rise of InsurTech revolutionises how we think about insurance distribution.

Moreover, insurance companies are improving their operating models, upgrading their propositions, and developing innovative new products to reshape the insurance industry as a whole.

Five key technologies are driving the change today:

  1. Cloud computing
  2. The Internet of Things (including telematics)
  3. Big data
  4. Artificial intelligence
  5. Blockchain

This report examines these technologies’ potential to create value in the insurance industry. It also examines how technology providers could create new income streams and take advantage of economies of scale by offering their technological backbones to participants in the insurance industry and beyond.

Cloud computing refers to storing, managing, and processing data via a network of remote servers, instead of locally on a server or personal computer. Key enablers of cloud computing include the availability of high-capacity networks and service-oriented architecture. The three core characteristics of a cloud service are:

  • Virtualisation: The service is based on hardware that has been virtualised
  • Scalability: The service can scale on demand, with additional capacity brought online within minutes
  • Demand-driven: The client pays for the services as and when they are needed

cloud

Telematics is the most common form of the broader Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT refers to the combination of physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these physical objects to collect and exchange data.

The IoT has evolved from the convergence of

  • wireless technologies,
  • micro-electromechanical systems,
  • and the Internet.

This convergence has helped remove the walls between operational technology and information technology, allowing unstructured, machine-generated data to be analysed for insights that will drive improvements.

IoT

Big data refers to data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing application software is insufficient to deal with them. A definition refers to the “five V” key challenges for big data in insurance:

  • Volume: As sensors cost less, the amount of information gathered will soon be measured
    in exabytes
  • Velocity: The speed at which data is collected, analysed, and presented to users
  • Variety: Data can take many forms, such as structured, unstructured, text or multimedia. It can come from internal and external systems and sources, including a variety
    of devices
  • Value: Information provided by data about aspects of the insurance business, such as customers and risks
  • Veracity: Insurance companies ensure the accuracy of their plethora of data

Modern analytical methods are required to process these sets of information. The term “big data has evolved to describe the quantity of information analysed to create better outcomes, business improvements, and opportunities that leverage all available data. As a result, big data is not limited to the challenges thrown up by the five Vs. Today there are two key aspects to big data:

  1. Data: This is more-widely available than ever because of the use of apps, social media, and the Internet of Things
  2. Analytics: Advanced analytic tools mean there are fewer restrictions to working with big data

BigData

The understanding of Artificial Intelligence AI has evolved over time. In the beginning, AI was perceived as machines mimicking the cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem solving. Today, we rather refer to the ability of machines to mimic human activity in a broad range of circumstances. In a nutshell, artificial intelligence is the broader concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in a way that we would consider smart or human.

Therefore, AI combines the reasoning already provided by big data capabilities such as machine learning with two additional capabilities:

  1. Imitation of human cognitive functions beyond simple reasoning, such as natural language processing and emotion sensing
  2. Orchestration of these cognitive components with data and reasoning

A third layer is pre-packaging generic orchestration capabilities for specific applications. The most prominent such application today are bots. At a minimum, bots orchestrate natural language processing, linguistic technology, and machine learning to create systems which mimic interactions with human beings in certain domains. This is done in such a way that the customer does not realise that the counterpart is not human.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology used to store static records and dynamic transaction data distributed across a network of synchronised, replicated databases. It establishes trust between parties without the use of a central intermediary, removing frictional costs and inefficiency.

From a technical perspective, blockchain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records called blocks. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block. Blockchains have been designed to make it inherently difficult to modify their data: Once recorded, the data in a block cannot be altered retroactively. In addition to recording transactions, blockchains can also contain a coded set of instructions that will self-execute under a pre-specified set of conditions. These automated workflows, known as smart contracts, create trust between a set of parties, as they rely on pre-agreed data sources and and require not third-party to execute them.

Blockchain technology in its purest form has four key characteristics:

  1. Decentralisation: No single individual participant can control the ledger. The ledger
    lives on all computers in the network
  2. Transparency: Information can be viewed by all participants on the network, not just
    those involved in the transaction
  3. Immutability: Modifying a past record would require simultaneously modifying every
    other block in the chain, making the ledger virtually incorruptible
  4. Singularity: The blockchain provides a single version of a state of affairs, which is
    updated simultaneously across the network

Blockchain

Oliver Wyman, ZhongAn Insurance and ZhongAn Technology – a wholly owned subsidiary of ZhongAn insurance and China’s first online-only insurer – are jointly publishing this report to analyse the insurance technology market and answer the following questions:

  • Which technologies are shaping the future of the insurance industry? (Chapter 2)
  • What are the applications of these technologies in the insurance industry? (Chapter 3)
  • What is the potential value these applications could generate? (Chapter 3)
  • How can an insurer with strong technology capabilities monetise its technologies?
    (Chapter 4)
  • Who is benefiting from the value generated by these applications? (Chapter 5)

 

Click here to access Oliver Wyman’s detailed report

Insurance Data Integrated Platform

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

The insurance industry today is poised for a paradigm shift in the way that technology is deployed to provide products and services to customers. This has primarily been driven by changing business needs and the innovations brought about by myriad insuretech firms, leading to an inevitable shift towards adopting the new digital innovations.

Analysts have forecast significant investments geared towards the digitalization of the industry and expect such investments to continue pouring in for several years. It is also expected that an increasing number of new insurance companies will be driven by technology companies to bring better products, services, and customer service in the insurance industry.

A forward-looking plan of action, sufficient operational flexibility, an effective implementation strategy, and a willingness to adopt digital disruptions in every aspect of their organization – those insurers that have all of the above can position themselves to leverage the impending digital disruptions to propel their organization to the very forefront of the industry.

DEALING WITH THE DIGITALIZATION OF THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

These adopters of digital technology will have a clear upper hand against their competition. Suitably equipped to cut costs and design more attractive offerings, the digital insurance carriers are sure to acquire a whole new set of customers, thus increasing market share. Those who fail to quickly adopt the new technologies, on the other hand, will struggle to maintain their competitive positions in the midst of a customer-centric, price-sensitive market.

Data has always been at the center of the insurance industry, and despite the changes that are to come, data will continue to be the focal point of the industry. In fact, it’s set to play a bigger role to play than ever before.

The continued criticality of data in the insurance landscape is ensured by carriers’ need for information-driven strategies in the digitalized business scenario. They’ll have to leverage data as an asset, enabling automated decision-making in critical business processes, in order to thrive. This, in turn, is why a digital business technology platform – one that incorporates information management and analytical capabilities – will become a necessity in the future.

Without a system in place to support the analytics and reporting needs of the business, decision-makers may be left with no choice but to rely on conventional time-consuming manual processes those are more qualitative rather than quantitative in nature. This is bound to cause serious repercussions for the organization, ultimately resulting in missed opportunities and loss of competitiveness.

According to a Gartner study, the two following technology platforms are essential for any digital business:

  1. Data and analytics platform – This platform should consist of data management programs and analytics applications to enable data-driven decision making
  2. Ecosystems platform – This platform’s role should be to support the creation of and connection to external ecosystems, marketplaces, and communities

MFX

 

Click here to access MFX’s detailed White Paper

 

InsurTech Caught on the Radar

Publié le par hanswillertbleuazurconsultingeu

The overall picture that emerges from our InsurTech Radar is, first of all, that different business model categories vary significantly in terms of overall level of economic attractiveness and degree of startup activity. While some see little startup activity, others already appear overcrowded. The number of InsurTechs active in a category is not always in line with its relative attractiveness.

Secondly, even in the most attractive business model categories, it is not clear that InsurTechs will disrupt the industry and make the race. The players most likely to succeed vary by category. InsurTechs will not always be the winners. There are several categories in which either incumbents embracing digital change or firms from outside the insurance industry are most likely to succeed.

Thirdly, a number of underdeveloped categories present attractive opportunities. To be successful in these areas will require innovators to get creative on “demand side” thinking creating models that fundamentally change how risk coverage is presented and sold to customers, models that are not merely digital updates of traditional or slightly altered insurance propositions. Such thinking – substantially different from the “supply side” models of the current, first wave of InsurTechs – is essential for uncovering latent customer demand for risk cover.

Segment 1: Proposition

The proposition segment is less than half the size of the others. It is also the most varied in terms of outlook. The InsurTech Radar shows that there is currently a major mismatch in this segment between the categories with the highest level of startup activity and those with the greatest overall potential. Examples include Situational and Community-Based business model categories which we see as over-emphasized. Nevertheless, the proposition segment includes some of the most attractive categories of any InsurTech segment, as they represent true innovation on how risk coverage is presented and sold to customers – some of these currently see relatively little activity so far (such as the Risk Partner business model category). While the news here is good for established insurers, in that they are likely to be the winners in several of these attractive categories, it is also quite clear that InsurTechs are here to stay. The emergence of newly funded and fully digital insurance carriers might bring forward real breakthroughs. It is very likely that the segment will look quite different in a few years.

Segment 2: Distribution

The InsurTech Radar shows the distribution segment to be much better matched in terms of the level of activity and the categories with the highest likelihood of success. On the down side, all but two of these areas have, comparatively only moderate potential at best, due either to limited premium pools, challenges in sustaining value generation, little opportunity for differentiation, or some combination of these (such as B2C Online Brokers). As in the proposition segment, some of the most crowded categories are also likely to see a shakeout.

Segment 3: Operations

The operations segment is the most consistent of the three: Only one business model category here currently shows limited potential (the “Balance Sheet / Financial Resource
Management” category). Most others are highly attractive. InsurTechs are likely to dominate the segment, albeit sharing honors in the underwriting category with reinsurers.

InsurTech OW

Oliver_Wyman_and_Policen_Direkt_Global_InsurTech_Report_2017