Insurance Newsletter: June 2018

This month, there are two Celent reports that I’d like to draw your attention to. Both, to me anyway, represent important concepts to grasp and provide a different way to frame technology investment around us.

The first of these, Digitizing the Customer Experience: A New Framework from Karlyn Carnahan, reframes the way we may want to think about the traditional insurance value chain, shifting it from a process view towards one that focuses on customer experience.

As Karlyn notes in the report, in a world of customer-centric design, there are new ways to look at the customer value equation. Also, she observes that our current insurance application architectures that we’ve relied upon for delivering efficient processes aren’t always best equipped to deliver the digital capabilities required. If executed well, rethinking the application architecture using the customer experience framework may help insurers to prioritise better which new capabilities to pursue next, whether via the existing core, a new component, or through external service via an open API.

The second report that I’d like to highlight, The Year of the Insurance Platform by Donald Light, captures the technology shift towards the development of industry platforms.

This report seeks to define these platforms as one of two types, being Core System Based (CSB) or Designed-to-Scale (DTS). Out of these two, Donald suggests that we are likely to see a proliferation of CSBs as existing technology providers open up their platforms and seek to create their own ecosystems. DTS (which are more focused on creating industry utilities), on the other hand, are likely to be fewer in number and result in just a handful of dominant platforms emerging – probably by region or country, and by market segment / line of business. For DTS, the network effect will become a key criterion for success. Although still at a nascent stage in their development, I think you’ll agree that it will be DTS platforms that will spark most interest and excitement across the industry – an area that we will watch closely as things develop.

Finally, it’s time to get ready for the awards season. As with prior years, Celent is proud to support the Asia Insurance Technology Awards program again this year. If you have a great innovation or transformation project from the APAC region that you’d like to celebrate, please download the entry form from here. The final submission date is Friday 20th July 2018. Zao Wu, our new analyst based out of Hong Kong, will be managing the submission process within Celent and will happily answer any questions that you may have.

Jamie Macgregor
Senior Vice President
@JamieMacgregorC