Insurance Newsletter: January 2018

It’s a new year, and the insurance technology landscape is changing as rapidly as ever.

As outlined in our 2018 predictions blog published in December, the industry is still operating in a highly competitive and somewhat uncertain environment. Even the return to broad “synchronised” growth across many of the world’s leading economies (a topic of discussion last week in Davos, where our colleagues at Oliver Wyman released their latest thinking on the State of Financial Services and the global risk outlook) offers little respite for an industry faced with the double-edged sword of streamlining operations to rip out costs while rapidly modernising its client proposition to capture new distribution opportunities.

Reflecting on 2017 and the conversations that we’ve had with you as clients, there’s a set of clear themes in your aspirations, plans, and requests. These include: the need to better understand strategies for preventing a well-intentioned RPA project from turning into a management headache; use cases in AI and where the greatest opportunity for short-term value lies; technologies that really change the nature of customer engagement; and how APIs, microservices, and a maturing insurtech ecosystem (including access to accelerators) are presenting further opportunities to enrich propositions and insight (and reigniting the “build versus buy" debate). Topics like these are shaping our 2018 research agenda. If you would like to know more or tell us your thoughts on topics, please speak with your Account Manager.

Finally, I’d like to invite you to 2018’s Innovation and Insight Day scheduled for 24 April. We’ll be returning to The State Room in Boston, a great location with amazing views of the harbour, to share insights, network, and celebrate which of the more than 130 Model Insurer entries from 29 countries make it to the shortlist of award winners. The quality and degree of innovation in the submissions this year are impressive. Although I can’t say too much at this stage, they include our first-ever entry for virtual reality, a scattering of blockchain initiatives, a gaggle of telematics/IoT initiatives, a flock of impressive customer engagement/distribution initiatives, and a pride of major platform cloud implementations.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Jamie Macgregor
Senior Vice President
@JamieMacgregorC