Insurance in Flux

There are some key themes flowing through the evolution of technology generally that will have a revolutionary impact on the insurance industry over the next few years.

Some of these areas include the Internet of Things, social media, big data, cloud, mobile, security and digital. These changes are on top of the regulatory changes sweeping the insurance industry like the Affordable Care Act, HIPAA and privacy regulations.

But to focus on the technology changes:

• The Internet of things implies all things being IP enabled, including things that P&C Insurers think about, auto, home, facilities, and even human beings through wearables like the iWatch or Google Glass.
• Social media opens new ways to communicate to the customer and to understand the customer’s needs.
• Big data implies the collection of large data both internally and externally and acting on it through workflow and customer interaction.
• Cloud implies a virtualization of where the software and platforms resides, introducing security and regulatory considerations.
• Mobile becomes the preferred interaction mechanism for the customers, brokers, agents, etc. The customers “moments of truth” take place in an omni-channel environment.
• Security is within everything done by insurers, agents, packages, services, etc.

Ultimately, all of this turns the insurance industry into a digital industry. So, what does this mean for me within Novarica? Of course I will be participating in the creation and delivery of key Novarica advisory services including strategy development, vendor selection, benchmarking, and IT assessments. I’ll be adding my extensive international and enterprise architecture experience to Novarica’s collective expertise.

But my particular focus as I help drive and create these services will be to help overlay the trends listed above and evolve the offerings and delivery to our customers to take these into account. I will be working with the rest of the team to create new offerings that speak to the trends above like digital readiness, architecture governance, IT roadmap development, and large project implementation planning and risk mitigation.

Evolution of Revolution – for all a little of both. For me…lots of fun. I look forward to hearing your thoughts – contact me at mwein@novarica.com!