A History of Model Insurer

I have had the great privilege of running Celent’s Model Insurer program for four of its eleven years. I also participated in the evaluation of the winners in three other years, so it’s fair to say I am Celent’s Model Insurer historian. It is only right that I give a brief history of the program! Since the beginning, the vision for Celent’s Model Insurer research has been to try to answer an apparently simple question: “What would it look like for an insurer to do everything right with today’s technology?” As we all know, technology plays an integral role in every insurer’s strategy to grow its business and remain competitive, so learning about other companies’ initiatives helps you learn if you are doing the right thing. Our inaugural "Model Carrier" report recognized 39 insurer technology initiatives as "Model Carrier Components." Our approach was to offer, at a high level, some best practices in the use of technology across the product and policyholder lifecycle (product definition, distribution, underwriting, policy administration, service, billing, claims, reinsurance) and in IT infrastructure and management that a “model carrier” would use. Recognized insurers participated in Celent's first Model Carrier Summit in NYC on Wednesday, January 17, 2007. Model Carrier was renamed Model Insurer in 2010. In 2011 Celent introduced Model Insurer Asia. Insurance in the Asia-Pacific region faces its own set of business challenges, and insurance technology has evolved along a distinctive path. The inaugural Model Insurer Asia report and event used Celent’s globally recognized methodology and highlighted 18 Asian insurers for their state-of-the-art technology in the region. After 11 years of reviewing Model Insurer submissions, Celent is able to see firsthand how technology is changing the insurance industry. In total Celent has received nearly 700 submissions from insurers across the globe since that first report in 2007. Each year builds upon the trends of the previous year — the technology we saw as innovative in 2012 or 2013 is now more commonplace, and new, different opportunities are emerging for leading insurance companies every year. For example, one 2017 case discussed robotic automation, a technology unseen in insurance before 2015. As the program became more popular, Celent created a consistent, rigorous standard of evaluation. Since our Model Insurer program started, Celent has identified Model Insurers by looking at best practices in the use of technology across various areas of the industry. Model Insurer-winning initiatives are selected from the many submissions received and presented in our annual Model Insurer reports as case studies of specific initiatives and capabilities. In 2012 we changed how we categorized the projects to include Celent’s research themes, replacing the product and policyholder lifecycle components. This year we received over 60 submissions from 19 countries for Model Insurer (over 100 when you include Model Insurer Asia). Although the United States and Canada accounted for 52% of the submissions, EMEA, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America were represented well with 27%, 13%, and 8% respectively. They span the themes legacy and ecosystem transformation (40%), innovation and emerging technologies (25%), digital and omnichannel technologies (17%), operational excellence (12%), and data mastery and analytics (7%). Model Insurer winners stand as examples of successful IT project implementations across the globe. Celent believes that insurers can look to Model Insurer case studies and the knowledge Celent gains from analyzing all of the submissions as a means of understanding what is happening technologically in the market and a means of comparing themselves to a group of insurers challenging the status quo. Please join Celent in Boston on April 4 for Innovation and Insight Day, where the winners of the 2017 Model Insurer awards will be announced. I promise that the day will be worth your while! You can register here.