How to use speed and time to stay one step ahead in insurance
When it comes to time, the issue is about balance as much as it is about an insurer's ability to do things faster.
With property & casualty insurance, customers wish to be the early bird that catches the worm.
Time to market is key to an insurer’s position within the marketplace. Acquiring the speed, flexibility and agility to bring products to market faster than competitors is what gets carriers a seat at the Insurtech table.
For this, it is essential for tech vendors to be reliable and adaptable in order to meet the needs
of insurers. This requires an element of speed to adhere to the unpredictable nature of market changes.
Speed defining innovation
As competitive pressure forces MGAs and carriers to become more agile, insurers are beginning to prioritize speed to capitalize on a fast-moving market. One of the many limitations that can stunt this growth is the reliance on legacy policy administration systems and cumbersome internal processes. These insurers are rendered incapable of catering to the evolving needs of the insurance industry at large, not to mention the individual customer.
Needs have also changed since the pandemic, creating a greater requirement for customers to stay protected.
As insurers tune into customer needs, innovation, if approached the wrong way, becomes a pipe dream and can derail operations for months or years. With product life cycles shrinking, more is at stake and time-to-market strategies have become critical to success.
Speed should be the resting pulse of success for the modern insurer as they combat opposition in the marketplace. Transformation no longer has to be a mammoth project, costing millions and taking years to implement.
SaaS-based (Software as a Service) digital platforms make it easier for insurers to respond almost instantaneously to new market opportunities and a changing market landscape. Insurers are now able to launch new products in a matter of weeks or months, capitalizing on real-time opportunities and being the first to arrive to market.
In addition to quicker deployment, insurers can capitalize on new market opportunities at breakneck speed and address new coverages such as active shooter insurance. Without speed, insurers run the risk of losing control of their innovation and product lifecycle and succumbing to existing constraints that limit their capabilities. Deploying faster speeds simply requires the right software platform.
Time to market
When it comes to the insurance industry, Insurtech has not been at the forefront of embracing technology. But a forward-thinking insurance carrier will prioritize balancing time and speed by spending money on technology. To invest in modern technology, insurers need to ensure less money is spent on older systems. With new technology, it can create the differentiation and speed that your business needs.
With accelerating time to market, there is a handful of elements such as no-code application platforms which makes processes much simpler and quicker. This includes having a modern, digital system that has fast, up-to-date but low-cost technology, and the means to scan the market at record time. A single, unified digital platform that uses no-code software provides all the essential tools needed to build applications into one ecosystem, and reduce the time it takes to do so. In comparison to traditional code-based approaches, a no-code approach provides fast and easy processes and platforms.
Therefore, these platforms do not require big, costly updates to their systems, which in turn saves time and money. No-code also empowers less experienced customers to design applications within a visual framework. With pre-built connections, new customers are able to attach new applications to backend systems seamlessly, with the help of digitalized functions over traditional and slower, legacy systems.
No-code platforms enable acceleration in time to market as it negates the need to code or fix any bugs. By cutting out the time absorbed by going back on developments and functions, products can be released at much a faster rate. This positions clients ahead of the game, while their competitors are stuck trying to bring their version to market.
The benefits of innovative platforms
The quality of the solution and end product should not be compromised when it comes to prioritizing speed in the insurance industry. When speed is the focus, so is simplifying the quote, comparison, and purchasing stages of insurance merchandise.
Businesses need to use their industrial strength to identify what their business requires, what is the best way to obtain that, and how to source agile technology to get there. To be a leader in this process, you will need both time and money to gain speed to market.
Greg Murphy (Greg.murphy@instanda.com) is executive vice president for North America at INSTANDA. These opinions are his own.
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