5 Macro Trends Pushing Insurance to Digital
April 28, 2016 11:04 AM
For its People First: The Primacy of People in the Age of Digital Insurance study, Accenture surveyed 450 insurance executives. Nine out of 10 agreed that the pace of technology change will increase rapidly or at an unprecedented rate over the next three years. Following are the trends that those executives identified as the major disruptors that are shaking up the insurance business.
1. Intelligent Automation: The essential new co-worker for the digital age
Leading insurers will embrace automation not just to take advantage of the breakneck pace of digital change, but also to create a new digital world where they hold a competitive advantage, Accenture writes. Machines and artificial intelligence will be the newest recruits to the workforce, bringing new skills to help people do new jobs, and reinventing whats possible.
Big data is a big reason for this shift, Accenture adds, noting that sifting through the masses of big data to make rapid decisions is beyond the capability of the human workforce. Around 82 percent of survey respondents plan on using machine learning and embedded AI more extensively; 73 percent aim to leverage video analytics, and 75 percent are investing in machine learning.
2. Liquid Workforce: Building the workforce for todays digital demands
To achieve their ambitious goals, insurance leaders need to focus on an often overlooked factor: the workforce, Accenture says. They must look at technology as not just a disrupter, but also an enabler to transform their people, projects, and entire organizations into a highly adaptable and change-ready enterprise.
The big change for insurance IT departments is lowering the focus on hierarchy and siloed job functions. 80% of insurers agree the workforce of the future will be structured more by projects than by job functions. In addition, 42% of the insurance workforce is expected to comprise contract, freelance or temporary positions within three years.
3. Platform Economy: Technology-driven business model innovation from the outside in
Accenture defines a platform as a technical architecture, a governance model, and a set of technology services to enable the creation of industry-specific applications.
Eighty-three percent of insurers expect platform-based business models to become part of their growth strategy within three years.
4. Predictable Disruption: Looking to digital ecosystem for the next waves of change
Advances outside the insurance industry like precision agriculture, the industrial internet and smart cities are creating the foundation for the next big wave of enterprise disruption within insurance, Accenure notes. Thats all being driven by the Internet of Things.
IoT is putting insurers to the test already. 84% of insurers surveyed said that organizations are being increasingly pressed to reinvent themselves and evolve their business before they are disrupted. And 83% of insurers see the Internet of Things bringing complete transformation or significant change in the industry.
5. Digital Trust: Strengthening customer relationships through ethics and security
But underpinning all these changes is an assumption of trust that the insurance industry must earn, says Accenture. Without trust, digital insurers cannot use and share data, the company says. To gain the trust of individuals, ecosystems, and regulators in the digital economy, insurers must possess strong security and ethics at each stage of the customer journey. In addition, new insurance products and services for a connected age must be ethical and secure-by-design.
Three out of five insurers experience attacks that test the resilience of their IT systems on a daily or weekly basis, Accenture notes.