Cedants want tech to deliver transparency
Cedants’ needs are unchanged in terms of requiring access to capital and more insightful data, but their expectation as to how this is being delivered is changing, Jonathan Howe, global insurtech leader at PwC, told Baden-Baden Today.
“The desire—and need—for real-time transacting, greater transparency and automation has grown rapidly,” he said.
Howe believes technology can help to solve problems the industry has faced for decades and at the same time opens up new opportunities.
“New entrants such as insurtech startups can use open source software and platforms to build new businesses. These changes manifest themselves in a customer revolution—business to business and business to consumer—and the digitisation of entire business value chains. A key part of this will be insurers and reinsurers partnering with new entrants,” he said.
He sees all areas of the value chain facing change from the advent of insurtech, from customer acquisition and product distribution, to underwriting and pricing analytics, and automation of certain processes such as claims.
Howe suggested that significant value can be achieved from focusing on obtaining efficiency in the back and middle office, and that this is an area often overlooked in favour of the more ‘hyped’ areas such as customer experience and the internet of things.
Another rapidly developing area he describes is the accessing of new forms of data, and analysing this in increasingly sophisticated ways to provide new insight for underwriting, especially in commercial areas such as catastrophe cover and marine risk.
“At PwC technology is an enabler to all that we do,” he continued. “We tend not to look at technology as an end in itself; rather we focus on the strategic goals and desired outcomes and then use technology to achieve these.
“With insurtech, we focus on how these new businesses can meet the needs of customers and the industry and treat them as parts of the wider ecosystem.”
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