Realism the key to insurtech

Insurtech needs to be realistic, according to a panel discussion at the Intelligent Insurtech Europe 2018 conference in London today.

The ‘Disrupting the insurance value chain: failures, learnings and breakthroughs from the digital trailblazers’ panel included Matt Poll - CEO and founder of Neos, Romain De Maud'huy - chief transformation officer of motor and travel at AXA Partners, Philippe Lafreniere - chief growth officer at Slice, Polly Fishwick - GI change director at Legal and General, and Chris Sandilands - partner at Oxbow Partners.

The panel noted that there was a great increase in curiosity about insurtech – increasing co-operation between companies and insurtech providers. It said that there is a lot of innovation in many places, but that some is still quite small-scale. Although some are pushing into the main line insurance business, there is still some way to go.

The panel also pointed out that there is a lot of hype around insurtech and that insurance is a hard industry – harder than many insurtech companies realise. More insurers are investing more heavily in the right areas however, which is encouraging.

According to the panel, there are an increasing number of opportunities in co-operating with other companies, adding that many insurers take a risk-averse solution to technology at times. Core competence of insurers should be underwriting risks – so it therefore makes sense to partner with insurtech companies.

One existing challenge identified by the panel is that everyone is collecting data at the moment, creating the issue of how do insurers get hold of good data as opposed to bad? Companies need to manage what they have and identify the good data as soon as possible.

Finally the panel agreed that artificial intelligence could play a potential big part in the future, but also pointed out that the industry is still debating how will Amazon affect the market as it starts to offer insurance.

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More of today's news from Intelligent InsurTECH Europe 2018

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