Denise Garth

Insurers need to prepare themselves and their technologies to bundle, expand, embed, partner, customize and flex to meet future market demands.

Even with the macro-economic headwinds and other market challenges, every aspect of insurance is being redefined in the context of the future.

At the core of group and voluntary benefits is one question that affects all others. Who is the customer — the employer or the employee?

New research shows how COVID has moved insurance from seeing change on the horizon to feeling the impact of customer change in the decision-making process.

The pace of business has changed. The market has changed. The technology has changed. The competition has changed. And change has changed.

How can insurers make themselves more valuable to SMBs that need them more than ever in a rapidly changing risk environment?

Billing is important enough to the business that it requires a future-focused strategy. Billing innovation and transformation strategy pays for itself.

Changes in customer behavior are creating a series of “from – to” shifts that have huge implications for billing and payments and require a quick response.

Can insurers envision the opportunities clearly enough that they are motivated to switch gears and change something right now, and tomorrow, and the next day?

The customers want to drive. Are insurers prepared to thrive once we’ve handed them the keys?

Consumer trends may cause you to rethink how your organization fits within other ecosystems that customers want and are willing to buy insurance from.

While some may consider today's challenges translating to the worst of the times, this is the best of times for innovative-minded P&C companies.

Group and voluntary insurers have a whole new challenge: How to create products that fit each unique life and then offer them where life happens — at work.

Next-gen core platforms are going to rewrite group and voluntary benefits insurance because technology has advanced to the point where it can fill the gaps. 

The level of change has never been greater, and insurance’s opportunities have never been more numerous.

Can we design and build the insurance experiences that are meaningful for customers and the agents who serve them?

The future is going to include stronger insurer/distributor relationships. Agents want it. Insurers need it. Customers will benefit from it.

With the world changing, commercial underwriting is going to be called on to minimize the impact of complex risk on an ever-riskier world.

In most “retail” industries, customer digital enablement is just a matter of “give them what they want.” But insurance requires more nuance.

Only 25% of an underwriter’s day is spent on selling and broker engagement. They are spending entirely too much time on non-sales work.

Insurers seem stuck in traditional channels rather than expanding channel choice and reach, meeting customers where and when they want.

Increasingly, customers don't choose just a risk product but a combination of risk product, customer experience and services.

With embedded distribution, the insurer recognizes that insurance is just one task in the customer’s "job" and makes the buying process easy.

COVID and its digital pressures have compressed previous time assumptions. Even if you didn't respond, your competitors surely did.

Success in moving from the past to the future of insurance requires a two-speed strategy: Speed of Operations and Speed of Innovation.

The key for insurers is to think beyond a single transaction and be “partnership-ready,” which also means becoming “ecosystem-ready.”

Filing disability claims and requesting leaves of absence are being greatly simplified despite all the regulatory nuances.

For insurers willing to adopt a new mindset and leverage the latest technologies, the recovery that is underway is an opportunity.

It’s time to skip some traditional steps and pull in support systems that will help your organization play to its strengths.

... [fill in the blank]. The ability to use digital to jump into opportunities defines the difference between Leaders, Followers and Laggards.

The pandemic has obliterated any lingering doubts about the necessity of transformation. Operating digitally is the only way to stay in business.

Insurers are getting internal data sources in order but still struggle to realize the benefits of a fully integrated data environment.

In the first six months of 2020, e-commerce in North America as a percentage of overall commerce increased more than in the entire previous decade.

Strategic planning needs to be bold enough to match the velocity and magnitude of the changes the industry faces.

We now have a “digital wildfire” expanding rapidly every day, reshaping every aspect of our customers’ lives and businesses.

Forward-thinking leaders are digitally transforming their current business, while also disrupting it by building their business model for the future.

Life insurance can move past the 250-year-old, risk-focused transaction and become a core component within a life, wealth and health ecosystem.

Insurers must rethink their scope, away from a policy transaction and to a broader lifestyle experience across health, wealth and wellness.

What if life insurers reinvented themselves to be like retailers, obsessed with the point of purchase – digitally and in-person?

Market and growth opportunities await for those who accelerate the move to dynamic underwriting and pricing with new data sources.

Having partnerships and an ecosystem becomes very strategic as insurers expand their reach and presence to where their customers will be.

Will insurers continue to provide traditional insurance in traditional ways until forced down a dead-end path, or will they embrace new trends?

An abundance of startups shows the industry adopting a two-speed strategy, around speed of operation and speed of innovation.

The greatest threat may be auto insurers’ continued 100-plus-year-old view of auto insurance as a policy transaction.

The lesson for insurers about market boundaries is that the industry isn’t simply being reshaped, it is being “unshaped.”

Strategic planning seldom yields bold changes. Capital allocated to each business unit from one year to the next is nearly identical.

Regulation and innovation are not incompatible. When combined effectively, they will please customers and open new markets and opportunities.

The microservices architecture solves a number of problems with legacy systems and can continue to evolve over time.

Insurers haven't kept pace with understanding how people make decisions. New, digital models must cater to decision motivators and triggers.

Insurers that can provide an ecosystem of sensors, monitoring and risk reduction will find businesses are highly receptive.

Functional silos are optimized for operational efficiency, but, as customer journeys change, are degrading the customer experience.

Startups like Lemonade, Slice, Zhong An, Haven Life, Bought by Many and Neos are embarking on Digital Insurance 2.0 business models.

Gen Z tops the list of groups ready to purchase Digital Insurance 2.0 offerings that include messenger apps and mobile quoting.

Both traditional insurers and startups grasp the tremendous gap in SMB coverage and the corresponding opportunities for growth.

While the outlook for employee and voluntary benefits is promising, the market no longer looks anything like it once did.

The microservices approach to IT systems provides great flexibility, addressing the issues of monolith architectures that inhibit digital business models.

Digital playbooks are already in use. Does your company have a strategy to embrace the digital age and shift to Digital Insurance 2.0 to drive growth?

Business models of the past 50 years have been based on products, processes and channels for the Silent and Baby Boomer generations.

Succeeding in the SMB market requires understanding the unique characteristics of segments and developing appropriate strategies for each.

Turning awareness into doing is elusive, creating an ever-widening gap between leaders who are taking action and those who are not.

If you want to see your organization grow in the Digital Insurance 2.0 world, consider these six areas as New Year’s Digital Resolutions.

For existing insurers with legacy technology estates, tinkering around the edges or waiting to be a fast follower will not work, given the pace of change.

The promise of Digital Fusion is that the sky is the limit, and that digital thinking will provide growth through speed.

Innovative insurers are taking advantage of a new generation of buyers, capturing the opportunity to be the market leaders in the digital age.

Thanks to the gig economy and the sharing economy, business launches are on the rise -- creating a host of opportunities for insurers.

Insurers often kid themselves into thinking customers are 95% satisfied, when the real number is a terrible 75%. "Digital" can help.

How will a radically shifting market, where borrowing and lending are more prevalent, open doors for commercial and specialty insurers?

With the economy strong, benefits are important when competing for workers. Carriers have an opportunity but must overcome a digital obstacle.

Apps without content is like body without soul. A true digital platform architecture must enhance the benefits of apps.

Applying the right customer experience and technology can take a traumatic, frustrating experience and turn it into a positive, loyalty-building one.

The "platform economy" and the cloud will combine to create a new era of impact and industry upheaval.

Insurers can draw on NASA-like capabilities to monitor disasters and mitigate the effects.

A new insurance paradigm and renaissance is being crafted regardless of whether incumbents choose, or are able, to play in this area.

Any effort aimed at improving the claims experience through catastrophic preparedness will bear fruit in loyalty.

Once the leaders in data-driven decisions, many insurers now find themselves behind the curve because of digital advances.

When it comes to the list of disruptive technologies, are we giving chatbots enough credit? Development and use is in full swing.

A key question is emerging: “How can we illustrate and model insurance value to generations that may not grasp insurance?”

With a “Synthetic Sensor,” you will be able to just plug it into an outlet, and that room will immediately become a smart room.

Driverless cars are just the start of the reinvention of transportation. Autonomous trucks are close. Flying cars are even on the horizon.

Those that do not make the shift risk not only the loss of customers but also market share and relevance in the coming new age of insurance.

Though our organizations are independent, we are all a part of an interdependent ecosystem for service delivery — a highly relevant concept.

There has been a significant shift in where the balance of blame lies. Core systems are now the wall of resistance.

There will be a dramatic shift from traditional products to the new, post-digital age products redefining the market of the future.

Distribution is in need of constant change because growth will happen in areas where relationships are just as crucial as digital preparedness.

We are exiting the pre-digital age and entering a post-digital environment where survival will be measured by rapid adaptability.

Technology can let us recapture some of the simplicity of the fabled picnics on a pleasant spring day in the bluebell-filled woodlands.

Once your organization jumps the gap, you’ll put distance between your organization and those that didn’t act on their knowledge.

“It may seem like most organizations make rational choices based on deliberate decision making, but that’s not really how companies operate."

It is the knowing-doing gap. If we know that changes would be good for us, why are we so bad at acting on that knowledge?

Like TV, insurance is changing at its core because of a reduction in “viewership” and the changing demographics of younger generations.

Once an insurer is prepared to gather evidence quickly, quote quickly and engage with speed — every situation becomes an opportunity.

A traditionally complex industry is intersecting with a cognitive culture that is mentally trying to simplify, reduce effort and be more intuitive.

What became apparent in 2016 is that insurtech advancements and the forces of change may not see any significant slowdown.

Is there a way to rapidly and “safely” transform, using our current business as the engine to drive to a new business model?

Insurers have unbelievably broad data -- but that won't matter unless we embrace an entirely new field of knowledge.

At no time in the history of insurance can we find one year that includes this many game-changing events.

If the pay-as-you-use model continues to create innovative options, then there are dramatic implications — almost all of them positive.

What do SMEs want from insurers and service providers? Not anything resembling what's currently being offered to them, according to new research.

Rather than focus on how to upgrade core systems, insurers need to start with their business issues and work backward to the IT issues.

Significant capital will continue to enter the market for insurance startups — from insurers and MGAs to technology providers.

InsureTech Connect sent a clear message, that we have rapidly entered a new era that is more profound and important… a renaissance.

Competitive differentiation has moved well beyond incremental operational needs because of a complete dismantling of industry foundations.

What if, on Jan, 1, 2017, you awoke to find that most commercial polices were being sold online through digital agencies?

The greatest activity in insurtech focuses on the front end of the value chain, to change traditional insurance distribution.

Startups need to find a partner that has an agile, innovative solution that can rapidly get ideas to market.

How will insurers, as a part of the Insurance Renaissance, capture reality and put it to good use? Let’s look at six areas.

Group insurers still aren't scratching the surface of the market, but are some just one or two details away from unlocking it?

Just as today’s systems are modernizing, new testing methods are advancing the speed of development and implementation.

Do we have a strategy that considers both transforming the legacy business and creating a new business for the future?

Insurers need a “platform solution” to enable agility, innovation and speed. The cloud can be the critical enabler.

Insurers once asked, How do we do what we do better? Now, it's, How do we do what we haven't ever done before?

No matter what form of insurance you sell, technology-led opportunities for risk prevention (or elimination) have never been better.

Insurers must emulate Da Vinci, whose extraordinary powers of observation made him such an important figure in the Renaissance.

The details of exploratory analysis can be tedious, yet they are the crux of the genius involved in data science project methodology.

"The sector is in for its biggest shakeup in 100 years as investors continue to pump billions of dollars into InsurTech."

In insurance, radical shifts in business, technology and culture are not terribly different than in the Renaissance of the 1400s and beyond.

Here are five charts that show the high-level forces disrupting the industry, as well as how they connect and combine for even more impact.

Data scientists and business users of data need help as they translate their efforts and needs for each other. There are some good tools.

The cloud lets insurers innovate by quickly setting up a sort of satellite office -- just in a new cognitive space, not a geographic one.

Changing customer behaviors, non-traditional competition and operational constraints put many traditional insurance companies at risk.

Customer expectations, behaviors and risk profiles are evolving thanks to technology, social trends and other changes happening around us.

Just as retailers remodel every few years, insurers need to rethink their digital interfaces while optimizing their back-end systems.

Disruption in insurance is a question of when, not if. But it's also still a question of how -- how will the industry pass the litmus test?

The disruption in the industry’s traditional distribution system requires a "2D" strategy, optimizing both the front and back ends.

Innovative companies in Asia are, for instance, selling return insurance for items bought on Alibaba or marketing via a WeChat app.

Marketing's fourth P (place) is becoming key. Customers want to buy anywhere, putting new demands on distribution networks.

Insurers have a wealth of data on customers and producers. Insurers just need to think about it like Google does to be as effective as possible.

"Digital readiness" matters so much because insurance is, itself, so ephemeral -- and leaders are mostly grasping the challenges.

If the industry isn’t currently innovating, new competitors entering the market are! There are dozens of examples of potential killer apps.

Few insurers found a killer app in the first Internet wave, but there is new hope. The formula for innovation: Think big, smart small, learn fast.

Our industry, steeped in centuries of tradition, must erase the idea that we can ease into the renaissance with minor adjustments.

In the digital revolution, insurers must recognize that a one-size-fits-all channel model is obsolete and must find new ways to touch customers.

If you really listen to the voice of the customer, you'll hear horror stories. It can be easier to find early-stage funding than to buy insurance.

The pace of change demands that companies try to become a Next-Gen Insurer, but research shows that very few are moving fast enough.

Game changer: One outsider just got a head start and may soon own the customer in the fast-growing, new market segment.

Study finds more focus on core systems, as the foundation for innovation, and use of perspectives from outside the industry.

Traditional companies, such as insurers, must quickly adapt to the new models, or they will fall by the wayside.

If driverless cars end personal auto insurance, how will that affect other products? How do we assess the risk of a 3D-printed structure?

Although people outside China may not soon buy "naughty child insurance," the country's experimentation needs to be studied and emulated.

Silicon Valley companies may win because they focus on, for instance: customers, not the products they have to sell, and pulling, not pushing.

Insurers must stop thinking about protection and must focus on prevention, in a personalized way -- or will leave the market open for outsiders.

The average time to implement a product is 7.5 months -- but some innovative companies now do it in less than five days!

<p>Operational excellence is table stakes. The barrier to entry for all industries has either already fallen or is falling now.</p>