Tech trends to look for in 2017: Insurance sector

Technology trends and new business models are transforming the insurance industry by leaps and bounds.The top priority of insurance company today is to stay profitable and attain sustainable growth. And to enable this, the global insurance carriers are taking all possible measures to deploy innovative technology for improving the business processes and streamlining legacy applications. To know more, let us focus on some of the innovative technology trends for digital insurance that will transform the insurance industry in 2017.

By Rajeev Nagpal 

Artificial Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helping insurance companies develop systems that are able to perform tasks that previously required human intelligence and manual processing. With the advent of AI in the insurance industry, insurance agents can now count on s ophisticated systems for precision, efficiency, and flawless automation of existing customer-facing, underwriting and claims processes. In coming days Artificial Intelligence will be more disruptive and will be used to identify and assess emerging risks. With use of AI and behavioural economics, P2P insurance carrier ‘Lemonade’ launched in 2016,has transformed the way how traditional insurance carriers interact with their customers. From quote and buy to making a claim, the customer’s journey is simple and automated. Besides this, the insurance sector is also focusing on Blockchain technology to empower the future of Insurance. Blockchain can simplify paper work and improve auditability, besides helping the insurance industry to cut expenses significantly.

Predictive Analytics with Machine Learning (ML): Using predictive analytics with ML, the insurance companies can unleash the power of intelligence, to process complex data source variables into relevant data for actionable insights. This would help them predict what could happen next and what the best decision should be. As far as the insurance industry is concerned, predictive consulting is offered to customers to facilitate 24-hour customer service. Artificial Intelligence provides customers with quality service by offering real-time insurance consulting as well as instant feedback, similar to how Netflix knows to suggest a particular movie to any customer.

Cloud-based infrastructure: Since the insurance industry is implementing a streamlined workflow, there will be a considerable development in the use of technology that can be managed by means of on-premise and hybrid cloud infrastructure to guarantee flexibility to clients and customers. Moreover, it will help the insurance sector to adhere to the-ever-changing government policies within the insurance sector.

Customer Experience: The modern customer, especially the millennials, prefer advanced services from insurance companies. Thus, in order to make the processes simpler and faster for the customers, many insurers are going mobile to offer on-the-go insurance services. Since mobile apps enable customers to locate insurance agents, calculate their retirement income, or request for a policy quote easily, insurance companies cannot afford to ignore the role of mobile technology. Thus, in 2017 insurance companies will give highest priority to customer experience to stay competitive and ensure a successful digital evolution.

Heavy reliance on IoT and Big Data: The insurance sector is a data-driven industry that generates countless data— both structured and unstructured. Thus, insurance companies are counting on Internet of Things to accumulate more and more data pertaining to the behaviour of their customers.

Big data analytics help insurers take crucial decisions based on the analysis of the accumulated data. For example, data accumulated from wearable health devices enable insurers to monitor the activity of the customers so as to offer discounts for the customers’ healthy activities.

Challenges Ahead:

As the U.S. leadership is going through a transitional phase, the regulatory scenario for the insurance sector may present major challenges in 2017 owing to the new rules that may affect their business considerably.

Besides this, the insurance sector should focus more on cyber-insurance in 2017 for protecting individuals and businesses from cyber threats such as theft, phishing, spams, extortion, hacking, data destruction, and much more. Problems such as lack of effective technical solutions, difficulty in inventing solutions to combat network attacks, ignorance of users to utilize benefits of technical solutions, and cyber liability shell games played by vendors should be addressed immediately.

The author is vice president & delivery head – Insurance & Healthcare with Infogain