Insurtechs make carriers' push for digital easier

Remember all the way back to 2015 when insurtech was beginning to gain traction? It was all about disruption. How many conference presentations and blog posts predicted doom for the industry and included examples of Uber, Blockbuster and Kodak?

In order to explore this, in 2016, Celent surveyed insurance companies and technology startups to gather data about what was actually going on. Turns out that most of the efforts involved a very small degree of business model change. Partnering between insurers and insurtechs looked to be the most sustainable source of value. That is when we began to frame insurtech as “a new way to develop insurance products.” (See the Celent report Insurer-Startup Partnerships: How to Maximize Insurtech Investments.)

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At the beginning of 2018, insurers are still struggling to implement digital, design from a customer point of view, and implement at speed. However, recent developments signal a change.

Insurtechs are offering help. Lemonade released The Lemonade Insurance API last October to speed integration into other sites. Today, SliceLabs announced that its on-demand insurance transaction and engagement platform is available as a service.

These are valuable steps toward insurer-insurtech integration. For insurers, these actions lower the cost of entry into digital and also provide years of learnings based on the experiences of two insurtech leaders. For insurtechs, they offer additional revenue streams and insurance subject matter expertise.

This is good for insurers, good for insurtechs, and good for customer choice.

This blog entry has been reprinted with permission from Celent.

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Insurtech Insurance technology Revenue streams Digital distribution Customer-centricity Customer experience Customer service
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