Technology shifts insurers' focus with greater emphasis on bundled services

Insurers are moving from passively insuring loss and managing to claims to proactively ensuring protection for customers, as the bundling of insurance with products and services becomes more prevalent.

This is according to a report from Everest Group, 'Insurers of the Future: Insurance ITO Annual Report 2018', which explores the role of technology in the insurance industry over the next decade.

Insurers are already taking a more proactive approach to protection, which can be seen in the use of Internet of Things (IoT), for example the monitoring of homes (smoke and carbon monoxide alarms), cars (mileage, driving patterns), persons (exercise, lifestyle patterns), and businesses (boilers and water systems).

Digital channels are also being used to sell 'hyper-personalised' products, for example an insurer’s mobile application might use geo-location data to offer travel or airline insurance to a customer who is at the airport.

The report also highlighted that market leaders have already begun bundling insurance with remittance transfers and real estate purchases.

This bundling of insurance with products and services is making insurers increasingly 'invisible' to the end customers, according to the report.

“We’re already seeing evidence of insurers beginning to embrace their future reality,” said Jimit Arora, partner and leader of the IT Services research practice at Everest Group. “For instance, insurers are moving from long-term, traditional IT outsourcing projects to short-term, digital projects. These projects allow insurers to adopt emerging technologies, reduce time-to-market, and improve customer experience. We’re also seeing a steep rise in demand for artificial intelligence, blockchain, IoT, and automation in the scope of insurance IT outsourcing contracts.”

Join us at Intelligent Automation in Insurance - London 2018.  Book by Jan 31st and you could save £400.

More of today's news

Qatar Re to open new London branch; appoints head

XL Group estimates $45m cat loss from Southern California wildfires

QBE appoints CEO of Australian and New Zealand operations

Validus subsidiary AlphaCat climbs to $3.4bn in assets under management

Insurtech Hippo targets 60 percent coverage of US through Spinnaker partnership

Beecher Carlson CFO joins US broker Prime Risk Partners

Don't miss our insurtech email newsletter - sign up today