Data Initiation Helps Define Digitization in Insurance

My colleague Karen Monks and I have published a report on digital transformation in insurance recently. The main objective of this report was to identify differences in terms of digital transformation in insurance between different continents. However we have quickly noticed that the term “digitization” can generate confusion in insurance professionals’ mind.

Celent defines digital transformation as the strategy of transferring as many manual tasks as possible into digital activities. This strategy can be achieved through different ways, including:

• Process automation.
• Selling products online.
• Leveraging mobile devices and mobile technologies in general.
• Dematerialization of documents and communication materials.

In addition, we believe that data gathering through all sorts of tools, and therefore data management and analytics, play an important role in digital transformation efforts.
This been said I personally think there is a priority insurers should define when embarking in digital transformation initiatives. First of all I recommend them to set up a basic constraint as the corner stone of their digitization initiatives portfolio prioritization: data must be entered into their information system only once (not two, three times but only once). With this in mind they should reexamine all their core processes and find out where data leading to the same information is entered more than once. When this analysis is done they can start defining initiatives that will reduce these repetitive tasks. You’ll be surprised to see how this simple principle can generate drastic improvements to processes and drive higher automation, efficiency, etc.

When doing this, I also advise insurers to question whether the unique initial data entry into their information system can be done differently. With this advice I am trying to get them think of what I call the second wave of digitization. Indeed, to me digital transformation initiatives nowadays assume that human action is the initial generator of new data within an information system. However with the Internet of Things concept that my colleague Donald Light explained in two reports recently (here and here), insurers can also automate the initial data entry by leveraging connected objects. No need for human action any longer then!

To me there is a digitization sequencing insurers need to respect between these two phases. Indeed I think it is easier to generate value from the Internet of Things concept if an insurer has already well thought how to minimize repetitive tasks consisting in entering new data within their information system. Therefore I do think that insurers who have already done a great job at minimizing these tasks initiated by human action and who have an appetite to leverage the Internet of Things will be the leading insurers going forward.