In the age of digital transformations, insurers are creating unique customer experiences using data and technology. As customer demands and expectations evolve, insurers must decide if they want to lead the change or watch from the sidelines.
“Given the race for enabling next-generation technologies, insurance organizations must prioritize digital interventions that provide flexible options for reconfiguration as consumer expectations evolve rapidly over the lifetime of those implementations.”
– Michael Parcelli Senior Vice President, Xceedance.
As the global digital ecosystem expands, insurance organizations must embrace multi-stack innovation that combines and compliments different digital technologies. Organizational plasticity will allow technology-enabled insurers to cater to policyholder expectations regarding resilient delivery, location independence, and customer-centricity.
Let us look at five key technologies that will have a significant impact on the insurance industry:
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI will help insurance carriers streamline core processes, increasing productivity and service quality across various customer touchpoints. The proliferation of IoT (internet of things) and AI integration across devices will provide access to vast amounts of new data. This data will allow insurance carriers to understand clients more deeply, paving the way for personalized product offerings, pricing, and streamlined service delivery.
2. Data Extraction
The global insurance ecosystem is becoming increasingly networked and competitive. Industry incumbents face unprecedented demands in terms of precision, timelines, and predictive foresight, which can be addressed only by data-driven decision-making. Access to better data can improve risk selection, policy administration, underwriting processes, claims, loss modeling analytics, appraisal of insured assets, and regulatory reporting. IPA (Intelligent Process Automation), NLP (Natural Language Processing), and ITI (Intelligent Text Ingestion) are technologies that can create robust data extraction models.
3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
RPA enables automation of mundane yet complex processes and tasks, freeing up resources for other strategically critical tasks, increasing throughput, reducing turnaround time, and improving the overall efficiency of insurance operations. It facilitates automation of document processing and claims workflow, enhancing timelines, efficiency, determination of retention risk, and real-time access to customer data.
4. Analytics/Big Data
Securing both unstructured and structured data for analysis can help insurers foster meaningful customer interactions in distribution, claims processing, and customer services. The application of advanced analytics in actuarial practice can help establish premiums, manage portfolios (including loss prevention and propensity analysis), and review and estimate unpaid claims. Pricing and growth analytics solutions can address challenges related to business planning, product launches, product maintenance, price monitoring, profitability, and determining rate adequacy.
5. Low-Code/No-Code Technology
Low-code/no-code technology is revolutionary because it enables non-programmers to create applications faster than the traditional approach. Low-code/ no-code platforms offer businesses endless possibilities in maintaining and developing applications and insurance products, including coverage, rating algorithms, forms, application programming interfaces, and connectivity. They can help businesses achieve operational excellence, accelerate returns from new products and services, automate manual processes, and streamline workflows, reducing the gap between envisioned performance targets and actual performance. Once developed, the business can manage these solutions, implemented and verified by IT, and drive desired operational, regulatory, and other outcomes.
These technologies will help insurance companies build better processes for their customers to interact, connect, and have a more personalized experience.
The rapidly changing times bring new opportunities but they also create new challenges. What roadblocks can insurers expect? How can they overcome them?
