The IBM sponsored report may be said to be biased but another large scale study concluded that "80% of UK insurance buyers engage in online research but only 45% make the final purchase online." Source Acord 2018.
See Insurers losing the digital buying battle
Yet there is a case that insurtech vendors don't help. Oxbow Partners recently reported how Lemonade is far from revolutionary and more evolutionary soon looking more like a traditional insurer that had digitised, needing people and services and loosing that AI & Automation mantra. And the micro products are just that and you cannot end up with a portfolio of standalone insuretch products each incompatible.
On the other end of the scale are proposed open source platforms that will tie these products in a kubernetes container type architecture offering insurers the scalability and portfolio choice to meet customers's needs. These platforms tend to disappoint though as they are strong as the weakest link with the mega licensing fees, complexity and lead times of current platforms
What insurers really need is an orchestration hub that communicates with all participants and manages workflows across the whole claims life-cycle for :-
- Claimants
- Claims Handlers
- Fraud Department
- Investigations whether internal or external
- Supply chain partners and contractors
- Reserving and Payments
- Happy customers
And has no upfront costs and pay-as-you-go licensing. There are a number of such options including360Globalnet
But the insurance industry is behind the curve, and only now beginning to catch up by partnering with insurtech. According to the report, 81 percent of outperforming insurers have either invested in or are working with insurtechs. Just 45 percent of other insurers have done so. And while almost three in four insurance C-suite executives believe insurtechs are disrupting the industry, just 43 percent see this same disruptive effect on their own business, something that could indicate overconfidence in their own way of doing things.
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