Insurance Newsletter

It’s been a busy October for insurtech conferences and client events.

The month kicked off with InsureTech Connect. Approximately 6,000 people descended on Las Vegas to attend the conference this year — an incredible number and an indication of just how large a draw emerging tech has become. The Celent team was there in force and active across the event, running pre-conference sessions, presenting, moderating, and meeting interesting people with interesting propositions. To get a feeling of the main takeaways, check out Karlyn’sblog on the topic.

We are also well into our series of roundtable events on the latest position of artificial intelligence. We started in London before we headed off to Tokyo, and we will be in Hong Kong later this week. These events are the face-to-face versions of our webinar series, in case you have been unable to attend (see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 scheduled for 30 October).

Finally, like a thousand other insurtech leaders and innovators across Europe, we attended the Digital Insurance Agenda’s Munich event. Craig Beattie will soon blog about it. If you can’t wait for that, then here is a link to his favourite tweets from the two days.

Conferences like these are a fast way to get to meet a lot of people in a very short space of time. They’re valuable in an environment where information to really understand the truth around business traction of insurtech ideas is hard to come by. If I had to boil down the key message from these October events, it’s that the world of insurtech has moved on from nascent enthusiasm and “tourism” towards a real and pragmatic focus on proof through results.

We’ve moved quickly from the realms of scratching our heads while deciding what to do into executing on some practical applications in both the conventional sales and claims processes. That said, everything is not as simple as it seems, and industrialising processes around use of some of the new techniques and tools appears to be presenting a few challenges. Our report series on the topic aims to help insurers balance agility with effective governance.

As covered earlier this year, the time-to-value question appears to be very much in focus, as is the need to continue creating effective partnerships (as covered in Mike Fitzgerald’s latest report on Insurer-Startup Partnerships). Overall, I’m heartened by this shift and look forward to seeing how the market develops and what comes through our Model Insurer program, where we look to find the best examples of emerging technology use to drive business results. (Entries for 2019’s awards can be submitted here. Information on 2018’s winners can be found here.)

Jamie Macgregor
Head of Insurance
@JamieMacgregorC