From personalization and improving customer experiences to the need for more speed and agility, today’s insurance industry is faced with constantly changing challenges and opportunities. We spoke with Brad Worth, senior vice president of channels and product solutions at EIS, to get his insights on how the insurance industry is evolving, why different insurance domains have achieved varying levels of transformation, and how EIS and our partners play a crucial role in that evolution.
What do you see as the evolution of the insurance industry?
Insurance industry leaders are racing to become customer centric, and that’s hard given that insurers’ systems are all product centric. P&C is in the middle of this transformation, and in many ways is much further along than life and healthcare. Carriers have to know their customers and act like it with personalized products and customer experiences if they want to remain competitive and relevant. As a result, there are great opportunities for customer-centered, functionally rich cloud-native platforms. Those that are architected for today’s business and technical needs — meaning configurable, microservices-based, API-first, and that support multiple domains, P&C and L&A on the same platform, for example — have huge growth opportunities.
Where does EIS sit in this evolution?
EIS is cloud native and API first, which are absolutely necessary to delivering the types of customer experiences people are demanding these days. We make it easy for insurers to connect to insurance ecosystems, insurtechs, and emerging technologies. But we also can support any line of insurance: P&C, life, group and voluntary benefits, healthcare, dental and ancillary benefits. That makes us unique.
And it’s not hypothetical. Speed and agility are baked into everything our carrier customers want to do. We do implementations in months. Integrations are simplified and accelerated as an API-first platform. Software updates happen constantly, so there are no more “big-bang” upgrades. So to answer your question more succinctly, we believe EIS is the best platform to support the digital transformation programs that are being implemented and supported by our strategic partners.
Why are the insurance domains at different levels in terms of transformation?
P&C is further along the path because they’ve been directly interacting with customers for longer. But now digital transformation is here for life and health as well, and it will impact how policies are sold, underwritten, and administered. The reality of customer ecosystems and increasing customer loyalty will be major considerations in the future of these marketplaces.
Can you outline EIS’ progress to date and the role our partners play in our continuing success?
EIS has grown substantially in recent years, and we’ve invested heavily in our expansion across insurance domains, geographies, and in terms of talent acquisition.
The recent growth investment in EIS provides an accelerated path for us to continue growing our talented R&D, product development, product leadership, and services workforce. In addition, we have aggressive plans for further expansion in the EMEA and APAC markets to supplement our strong and growing foothold in North America and expect to win even more digital transformation opportunities with our implementation and technology partners.
Our partners are extremely important to EIS and critical to our growth plans. Our partners offer unique experiences and local knowledge, advisory relationships, and their global reach is critical to EIS’ continuing growth.
Brad Worth, senior vice president of channels and product solutions
What value do you put on our partners?
EIS has a focused and selective approach to partners. Partners are critical to our growth, but we’ve taken a very deliberate approach to identifying and working with those partners who bring deep experience in the overall program transformation space: advisory, program leadership, and deep implementation and delivery capabilities. I would describe our system integrator and technology partners as best in class, and I look forward to our continued open, productive, and mutually beneficial partnerships in this very exciting and constantly changing industry.
Some of our top competitors list 50 or more partners in the various categories. Why do you think that is?
I can’t comment specifically on why our competitors have so many, but for EIS, we are focused on a limited number of strategically significant partners that are having an impact on insurers and their customer bases worldwide. Our partners share our vision. Our partners also share our values and embrace our idea of a multiline business platform that’s cloud native, customer centric, and constantly updated. Our partners are also highly innovative with proven track records of delivery for their customers.
What is your vision for the EIS partner organization?
Historically, EIS has focused on system integrators, and we work with the best in the business. Part of our ongoing growth, particularly in Europe, requires partnering with system integrators who understand the EIS value proposition as well as the specific geographic locations in which they deliver. We also benefit from the strategic value our advisory partners bring to the customer, where they help carriers understand how EIS is well suited to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions and support the ever-expanding insurance ecosystem network.
On the cloud technology partner side, we are cloud native and we already work closely with AWS and Microsoft, and we’re also excited about our work with Google. Finally, I want to continue growing our insurtech partners. EIS is an open API-first platform, and we want to continue to build out our library of pre-integration and accelerators with leading insurtechs and third-party solutions.
As I understand it, you’re a big sports fan. Who do you cheer for?
While I can’t influence outcomes, I’ll continue to be a die-hard Toronto Maple Leafs fan and support them every chance I get, even though they haven’t won a championship in over 50 years. How’s that for loyalty! The same is true of EIS. I’ve been with EIS for over seven years now, and it’s a fantastic, growing company that’s changing the way everyone thinks about insurance. I’ll continue to use all my energy to support and grow our partner network so we can continue to achieve great things together — with the customer at the center of everything we do.
Learn more about our partners and partner program.
