2017/10/12
My biggest takeaway from ITC 17 was my surprise at seeing the large presence of incumbent core system providers, including: Duck Creek, EIS, Guidewire, Insurity, Majesco, OneShield, Sapiens, and Solartis. While all of these are well-regarded established firms, none of them would be mistaken for insurtech start-ups. So, why were they there?
Here are a few hypotheses:
- ITC is drawing a large crowd of insurer technology purchase decision-makers and decision-influencers, and if you are offering insurance technology, that’s where you want to be
- The incumbent technology providers want to demonstrate that the insurtechs do not have a monopoly on new technologies (think RPA, AI, ML, IoT and . . .)
- The incumbents want to scout the insurtechs to see which have something worth licensing, or offering (as a fast follower), or possibly even acquiring
- Five years from now, people will look back and say insurtech’s biggest impact was how it forced insurer IT groups and incumbent tech vendors to elevate their CX/UX game and massively reduce cycle times.
I’ll vote for all four, with two votes for #4.
This is the event that our parent company helped found with two tech entrepreneurs. They had a shared vision that the Insurance industry did not have a single place in which incumbents, insurtech entrepreneurs, venture capital firms, and regulators could come together to improve the industry.