Significant moves have been made to revolutionise the back office, with straight-through processing, electronic placement and digital claims paying platforms increasingly being used.
Even London, for so long regarded as the dinosaur of the global (re)insurance industry, is getting in on the act.
The Corporation of Lloyd’s is pushing its market modernisation efforts by mandating managing agents to take on a certain percentage of business through electronic platforms.
At the same time, the very face of the wider market is changing with the advent of the so-called InsurTech industry – a term created to highlight the marriage between the insurance industry and its cohorts in the technology sector.
Back in October, The Insurance Insider partnered with software platform AdvantageGo to host a roundtable which considered the wider state of the (re)insurance industry, as well as the growing influence technology is having on the market.
Among the many talking points that arose, some of the most interesting centred on which technologies the participants felt were being over-hyped, as well as those proving to be a hit with the industry.
Interestingly, artificial intelligence (AI) – a system many believe will revolutionise the industry once companies work out how best to harness its power – was considered to be an over-hyped innovation. That is only the case now though, and once the (re)insurance industry gets a handle on AI’s capabilities, it will be able to use them.
The belief that technology will serve as an agent that will fundamentally change the way that the industry operates was also given short shrift by participants.
There is little doubt that the application of technology will prove to be a useful tool for the (re)insurance industry, but its ability to disintermediate the market is exaggerated.
Technology will surely continue to push through progress on the consumer-facing side of the insurance sector.
But, in the more nuanced and specialist property and casualty space, technology will support the placing of risk rather than drastically overhaul it.
These topics, and a whole host of other interesting talking points, arose during the discussion, and over the coming pages we present the highlights of the debate.
To view the pdf version of The State of the Market Roundtable, please click here.
To visit the Advantage Go website, please click here.