Modern Insurance Magazine Issue 65
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INSURTECH<br />
The Fastest Fish<br />
in the Ocean<br />
Fresh from Insurtech Insights’ 2024 Europe<br />
conference, one thing is clear. Even in the space<br />
of just 12 months, there has been a marked shift<br />
in the insurance industry’s appetite for digital<br />
transformation at scale.<br />
To use a phrase from a panel discussion that I was part of at<br />
the conference, ‘the industry is in the midst of a tidal shift’. It’s<br />
no longer about being the biggest fish in the ocean; you also<br />
need to be the fastest.<br />
The speed of technological change is unlike anything the<br />
world has seen before. The momentum in machine learning,<br />
and particularly Generative AI, is rapidly changing the way<br />
that insurance companies manage risk, not to mention the<br />
way they think about, or interact with, customers. Insurers<br />
recognise that they must digitise to defend their position,<br />
and then take another step if they want to gain market share!<br />
That said, most of the insurers I know also see immense<br />
opportunity in this challenge. This is why core modernisation,<br />
which involves taking a layered approach to rearchitecting<br />
core systems with cloud-based solutions (like INSTANDA),<br />
is rapidly rising in importance. From a governance and<br />
regulatory perspective, it’s very difficult for large insurance<br />
carriers to change their operating models at pace. That’s<br />
where INSTANDA’s solution is a particularly attractive one.<br />
INSTANDA enables insurers to take a slice of their operating<br />
model and make it much more agile in terms of change. Over<br />
the next few years, larger insurers will see their cost base<br />
reduce as a result of modern technology solutions.<br />
From the conversations we are having with new and<br />
prospective clients, there’s a palpable focus on making<br />
interactions with the customer more meaningful and<br />
frictionless across the value chain. Insurers have always<br />
wanted to do good for their customers (and they’ve done<br />
a pretty decent job over the last 300+ years), but there’s a<br />
pivot happening. Progressive insurers are looking at their<br />
business through the customer lens to meet the customer<br />
where they are with products and experiences that they<br />
want and need, and all at a far quicker pace than what the<br />
insurance industry is accustomed to.<br />
This is not to say that the legacy challenge has disappeared.<br />
Far from it. Operating models are holding insurers back.<br />
Beholden to complex and deeply engrained legacy<br />
technology, many do not have the middle and back-office<br />
functions to consistently reiterate their product offering and<br />
pricing. As a result, they run the risk of being outpaced by<br />
the competition.<br />
Tim Hardcastle,<br />
CEO and Co-Founder, INSTANDA<br />
86 | MODERN INSURANCE