How the metaverse could transform insurance — a five-year view
From VR and AR training to meeting policyholders in a virtual office, the metaverse hosts a range of possibilities for the insurance industry.
The metaverse is ushering in the next wave of digital change that will present insurers with a powerful technology toolset to build differentiation as well as challenges to navigate over the next five years. The metaverse will elevate expectations for how carriers interact with customers, what products and experiences they design and distribute and how they operate their organizations.
As the next evolution of the Internet, the metaverse will be a continuum of mature and emerging technologies, working together, to create immersive content and experiences, incorporating artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), blockchain, digital twins, edge technologies, cloud, digital currencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), social platforms, e-commerce, and digital marketplaces.
In the years ahead, the rise of the metaverse will begin to influence every facet of insurance — from the workforce experience to distribution, revenue pools, and operations.
As outlined in Accenture’s Insurance Technology Vision 2022, here are some of the early ways we expect to see the metaverse impact insurers’ operations and their customer and employee experience.
Employee experience
Some insurance companies are already experimenting with VR/AR as a way to train and upskill their people. As metaverse technologies mature, carriers can seize the opportunity to scale these efforts up and offer deeper, richer experiences.
They will be able to offer training experiences that are not otherwise possible and that offer process enhancement and cost reduction in areas like risk assessment or damage evaluation.
An insurer can’t burn down a skyscraper in the real world to train claims adjusters. In the metaverse, an insurer can vividly show employees, individually or in a collaborative virtual group, what to look for in the aftermath of a building fire or other catastrophic event. Or imagine the potential of using AI and VR to create training simulations, where managers can learn how to navigate difficult conversations with their teams.
A revenue shift to, and within, the metaverse
One of the first opportunities many insurers will seize is creating parametric insurance products that cover metaverse-specific risks, especially those around digital assets like blockchain-based tokens and NFTs. According to Chainalysis, fraudsters stole more than $7.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2021, an 81% increase from 2020.
Metaverse real estate sales are rapidly growing and commanding material investments for prime locations. And virtual lives – for example, digital avatars and characters that users build, often at great expense — introduce new opportunities, especially around high-stakes, play-to-earn platforms.
Distribution in the metaverse
The COVID-19 pandemic altered the norms of how most carriers conduct their business, and similarly, the metaverse can bring the next sea change in how consumers and insurers interact.
For example, the metaverse could offer an experience that maintains the personal feel of face-to-face interaction in a digital environment. Recreating the trust and human touch of the agent sales experience, while introducing more visually engaging ways to help buyers understand product features and trade-offs, could help accelerate the move to digital channels, offering brand value and access to new, tech-savvy customer segments.
While it is early days still, the continued expansion of the metaverse is inevitable. This metaverse continuum will bring significant shifts in the way insurers do business. As with any technology advancement, new areas of risk will emerge. And customers will demand that insurers be there to offer holistic risk mitigation to help protect their interests as well as their assets.
Regulations and respect for social norms will be imperative, and insurers will be expected to help users engage safely with all kinds of virtual experiences. As was the case early in the rise of social media, we might not yet foresee all ethical, reputational, and legal risks the metaverse will surface. In order to maximize the opportunity, insurers will need to wrap their innovative offerings with security assurances to maintain the customer trust that they have worked so hard to earn.
Steve Murphy is global technology lead for Accenture’s insurance industry group. Over the course of his more than 20-year career with Accenture, Murphy has managed large IT and business transformation projects for some of Accenture’s most prominent clients in financial services, healthcare and the public sector. His areas of expertise include cloud computing, enterprise architecture, IT governance, customer analytics and online selling, as well as mergers and acquisitions and post-merger integration. Steve has a degree in cognitive science from Dartmouth College. He is based in New York.
Opinions expressed here are the author’s own.
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