Alan Walker is an international thought leader, strategist and implementer, currently based in the U.S., on insurance digital transformation.
Walker set up his independent consultancy/interim executive firm, Alan Walker LLC, in July 2019.
Prior to that, he was an insurance consulting partner with Ernst & Young and an executive vice president of Capgemini Invent (formerly Capgemini Consulting).
Walker holds bachelor and master degrees in law from the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, respectively, and he is also a chartered accountant.
In my previous article (New Operating Model for Insurers (Part 1)), I set out the steps that an insurer can take to redesign its operating model to meet its new business priorities. Here, I’m going to offer some observations on what that new insurance Target Operating Model might look like. My core assumption is that […]
I’ve posted previously on the implications of COVID-19 for insurers’ business models and for insurance products and services. And my survey on changed priorities in the wake of the pandemic showed that insurers feel they have much more work to do on both workforce flexibility and new or revised customer communication and servicing channels. It seems timely, therefore, to provide […]
My article on the longer-term business model implications of Covid-19 asked whether COVID-19 creates an opening for new, or updated, products and services that insurers should be offering to the market. This article is an attempt to answer that question, focusing on P&C/general insurance. Personal Lines Given its scale, let’s start with auto/motor. So far, we’ve seen major […]
Back in mid-March, I wrote a piece titled COVID-19: Implications for Insurers. Two of the questions with longer-term implications that I suggested senior executives should consider were: Do we need to reduce our reliance on people being co-located, by re-considering office infrastructure strategies and the degree of remote working as standard? Do we need to reduce […]
Having spent seven years helping major insurers with digital transformation, I’ve seen the good, the bad and sometimes the downright ugly in practice. The bad and the ugly include: Digital “strategies” disconnected from the priorities of the business; Inconsistent approaches across different parts of the insurer, confusing customers; Gaps and overlaps in delivery, wasting both […]
Given that the customer of the future wants solutions rather than products, the employee benefits provider of the future will offer a wider range of products, all designed to work together. Knowing that careers are becoming to be more fragmented (shorter tenure, parallel income streams, the gig economy), the employee benefits provider will also reduce […]
As I indicated in Part 10, I’m expecting the future role of the broker or agent to be severely curtailed. But that’s not to say there’s no role for intermediaries of a different type. In commercial lines, I expect to see an expansion of the push that some of the brokers have already made into broader […]
The earlier articles in this series can be found here. Last year, I moved from the U.K. to the U.S. I tried to arrange insurance directly with the brand names I knew best – but it quickly got difficult. I didn’t have a U.S. credit history, I didn’t have a U.S. insurance history, and I’d only […]
The other entries in this series can be found here. As we’ve seen in previous parts, the Insurer of the Future will have far fewer employees in pricing and underwriting, in claims, in product development and in the back office. Overall, therefore, the Insurer of the Future will have far fewer employees per million of premium than its predecessors. […]
The other installments in this series can be found here. So far, I’ve talked about the specifics of claims, underwriting and product development, but I haven’t really talked about the back office administration functions. If you’ve been with me so far, you won’t be surprised to hear that I think AI, robotics and other automated […]
This is the seventh in a series. The other parts can be found here. At the Insurer of the Future, products will be very different from nowadays. But how will they be developed? Certainly not the same way as now. To begin with, all products will be created as a series of modules. Modular design enables […]
This is the sixth in a series. The other parts can be found here. The Insurer of the Future‘s customer won’t have to buy individual products. Instead, she’ll buy a total risk management solution that flexes to her needs month-by-month, day-by-day and hour-by-hour. She’ll be billed according to her actual usage, so she’ll never be under- […]
The previous articles in this series can be found here. The Insurer of the Future will be class-leading in customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing. CRM was always a challenge in the past because, unlike banks and retailers, insurers had only small numbers of interactions with their end customers. That made it hard to gather data on the […]
This is the fourth in a series. You can find the first three parts here, here and here. The Insurer of the Future’s use of blockchain will depend on whether it is a new entrant or a traditional player. For new entrants, blockchain will be at the core of both their business model and their operating […]
The first two parts of this series are here and here. William Gibson, the author, once said, “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” So what is “already here” in relation to claims handling? Two data points: Lemonade, the new U.S. insurer, says it has used AI to complete the entire claims […]
If I were a young actuary or underwriter, I’d be worried — because the Insurer of the Future won’t have much need for my skills. What do these professionals do for a living? They rely on their personal experience and various data sources to understand and price a risk more accurately. Sometimes they carry out complex statistical […]
In last summer’s blog series, I looked at the impact of digital on the insurance industry’s barriers to entry. Now I’ll change the perspective and ask, in response to digital and other pressures, “What will the Insurer of the Future look like?” Auto/Motor Insurance The Insurer of the Future will do very little business in the auto/motor market. Insurers […]
