Insurance innovation strategies

In increasingly competitive global markets, there are steps insurers should take internally to set the stage for success, and which could help avoid some of the more common pitfalls of incrementalism, including:

Decide if the organization's culture and leadership is truly capable of committing to the journey of transformation, let alone arriving at the destination. If not, consider setting up a newco and subsuming oldco into that entity when the time is right.
Before setting out on the journey, decide who is driving. Sorting out any IT politics between the CIO and COO will help ensure that turf wars don't torpedo solid business cases.
New tools will demand new skills of managers who have built careers leading and inspiring people. Change management is essential at all levels.
Make sure business cases are predicated on the benefits of growth, client retention, 24/7 customer service, and legal/regulatory compliance. Cost savings should be a given and need to be banked, but cannot be counted on to drive a strategic agenda focused on future survival and growth.
Robots can't play leapfrog. If existing processes and IT systems are the product of incremental enhancements known only to a few key SMEs, chances are the initial automation phase will be a train wreck. Formal reviews of as-is processes are a pre-requisite to launching successful projects in this space.
Tools like robotics and AI are still in their infancy, so don't bet the farm on any one technology and partner with relevant players willing to bear the obsolescence risk, thereby allowing organizations to select the needed skills without reverting to the 10-year contracts of old.
Don't be too proud to seek help, especially from experts who can combine deep insurance domain knowledge with hands-on proficiency in emerging and intelligent automation. Cutting-edge technology often looks desirable and exciting, and the rewards can be enormous, but, so too can the cost of failure. It is quicker and much, much cheaper to learn from the experiences and mistakes of others.

One final point: Tradition and longevity have been hugely valued over the generations within the insurance industry. But the industry is ill-served by a pervasive view that having been around for 300 years, it will, of course, survive another 300 years.

Special Reports /

The robots are coming to insurance, but only fools rush in

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