It’s no secret that digital transformation is causing the life insurance industry to look increasingly different than it used to be. The key drivers behind this change are policyholders themselves. They expect more from their insurance companies than at any point in history. Easy-to-understand policies. Simpler buying decisions. No intrusive medical exams. Rewards for healthy habits.
Several of the long-standing players in life insurance aren’t waiting. They’re setting themselves apart as digital leaders along with new market entrants and insurtechs. As these first movers shake up the industry to give life insurance customers what they really want, it’s become clear that the secrets to their success aren’t all that secret.
How Insurers are Preparing for the Future
As we’ve seen with other industries, including media, transportation and finance, the fastest-growing companies in life insurance are tech driven. Their vision isn’t about an app or a network. They understand it takes an innovative, agile work environment that enables them to turn ambitious ideas into reality. They ask big “what if” questions and use technology to answer them quickly. Their modern technology helps drive culture, attracting talent and teams that can outthink and outwork the competition.
Faced with the accelerating pace of digital transformation, two distinct approaches have come to the fore in life insurance. On one side is the longstanding, stalwart insurance company that prefers to invest only in low-risk or no-risk ideas with a focus on predictability over speed. On the other side are the future winners: the digital-ready leaders who manage risk by failing fast and prefer to focus on speed over predictability. The companies in this second group have similar traits when it comes to technology.
Here are the six attributes life insurance leaders demand of their core solutions and policy admin systems:
1. Open. The system must enable unfettered, inbound and outbound interactions through APIs and events while being easily adaptable and flexible to business needs. This makes unifying backend operational data and processes or powering up with third-party apps a breeze.
2. Customer centric. A multiline platform that permits the introduction of any product, in any channel, and sold to any customer using thousands of open-source APIs. It provides low-code tools and leverages AI-assisted automation to blend channels into a unified or “channel-less” experience, whether B2C, B2B, or B2B2C.
3. Cost effective. By moving capital expenditures to operating expenses, a leading coretech platform promotes cost predictability and reduces risk, which lowers TCO and generates faster ROI.
4. Cloud native. Purpose built for the cloud, featuring secure microservices architectures, containerization, event-driven capabilities, rapidly scalable and natively resilient. Beware modern legacy solutions that are older technologies that have been “lifted and shifted” to the cloud.
5. SaaS delivered. Empowering you to focus on your core business while leaning on the SaaS service to provide performance, reliability, security, and compliance in a package with predictable pricing and the same extensibility as an owned deployment.
6. DevOps enabled. For rapid implementation, innovation, and transformation with fast and low-cost product launches, non-disruptive upgrades, automated builds, and continuous agile cycles that integrate, deploy and deliver new or updated products. Coretech provides DevOps that reduce your IT training needs and increase management efficiency through cross-platform Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).
The ability to reimagine customer journeys and accelerate experiences will determine industry winners and losers. As a result, a life insurer’s single most decisive differentiator for today and tomorrow is speed.
Digital transformation won’t wait. It’s already here and more change is on the way. However, the core expectations and beliefs of business leaders often remain hardwired.
Becoming a high-velocity insurer requires a change in mindset, which isn’t easy and requires a conscious effort. To learn more about how to train yourself and your business to think like a digital leader, download our ebook: “How to Become a High-Velocity Insurer and Win in the New Digital Economy.”
