While attending InsurTech Boston in May 2022, I had the opportunity to talk with a number of carrier representatives who are interested in partnerships and improving how they do business with advanced technology. Ease of doing business came up again and again in our conversations.
This was a critical topic among all of the organizations in the room, not just carriers. Insurance as an industry is notorious for complex documents, black box operations and timelines, and the almost mystical reputation of actuaries. That’s not the way it has to be! The goal is to improve ease of doing business throughout the insurance lifecycle, for every stakeholder. We can agree on that.
For me, my first realization is that a speedy turn around with an opaque process is less important to me than a longer process with excellent transparency. I don’t mind complexity, especially in a process and product that I know is extremely complicated, highly regulated, and has a lot of moving parts. Honestly, I just want to know what’s going on. You may have different priorities than I do, and that’s OK.
In fact, your company will have its own answer, based on your organizational values and strengths. What matters most is that we engage in this thinking before embarking on the journey. It’s easy to be caught up in the excitement of making it easier to do business with your company without having a clear path the how you will actually tackle that extremely complicated process.
I use that language deliberately. We as an industry excel at dealing with complexity. What policyholders, agents, and other stakeholders value may vary based on individual preference, but in the end, our job as an industry is to provide a complex product with associated services while making it easier for all stakeholders to play one’s role within that product’s lifecycle.
Organizations must answer this question for themselves, knowing that the answers are interdependent, but setting a clear target based on their own identity and strategies. The specific ways to determine your company’s individual goal come through technology that enables change and progress toward that value. We’ve done it as much as we can with the technology that we have. It’s time to look beyond our current state and see where technology can take us.
