{"id":5555,"date":"2017-11-24T08:13:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-24T08:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/?p=5555"},"modified":"2017-11-24T08:13:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-24T08:13:27","slug":"insurbyte-2017-traditional-insurance-companies-must-embrace-insurtech-disruptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/insurbyte-2017-traditional-insurance-companies-must-embrace-insurtech-disruptions\/","title":{"rendered":"InsurByte 2017: Why Traditional Insurance Companies Must Embrace Insurtech Disruptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Insurance companies are being heavily disrupted. Their business model has been around for millenniums with very few changes to it. But this time is over. As people are increasingly distrustful of insurance while having a legal requirement to buy one, an increasing need for disruption has appeared, in terms of transparency, easiness and availability of choice. Startups have answered this call. Singapore, already known for being a Fintech hub, is one of the best examples of a country embracing disruption. The startup SingaporeLife, for instance, created an insurance company from scratch in 2014. It was the first digital company to receive a license by the government to distribute insurance. The government itself is pushing its startups with the creation of a regulatory sandbox for disruptive startups in the field of FinTech and InsurTech. Startups like PolicyPal have integrated this sandbox and therefore can benefit from an attractive regulatory framework and network to test and scale their solution.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These new solutions usually make a difference with their true digital native experience and an automated KYC (via face or picture recognition) that transfer cost efficiencies into value for customers. <\/strong><\/p>\n

At the end of September, we attended the InsurByte<\/a> Conference in Singapore. This annual event organized by the Fintech Consortium gathers more than 300 insurance, technology and institutional experts to talk about the future of insurance and how technology will affect it. We have been able to hear from the experience of startups, traditional insurers and regulatory associations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The insurance industry transformation isn\u2019t fast enough<\/b><\/h2>\n

Matthias de Ferriere from Stark Group criticized the fake innovation effort of traditional insurers creating \u201cInnovation Labs disconnected from the real business\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Overall, the panellists invited at the conference were pretty harsh on the current state of insurance companies. Matthias de Ferriere from Stark Group<\/a> criticized the fake innovation effort of traditional insurers creating \u201cInnovation Labs disconnected from the real business\u201d just to \u201cshow shareholders they\u2019re doing something\u201d. The same observation was made by Gr\u00e9goire Rastoul from UEX<\/a> who commented: \u201cthey have departments calling themselves \u2018Innovation\u2019, \u2018Transformation\u2019, \u2018Change\u2019, but they didn\u2019t transform, there is no delivery at the end. They do research but not development.\u201d He blames rigid regulations and governance, \u201cbecause innovative products are immediately absorbed by the compliance development.\u201d Gr\u00e9goire stresses that agility is key to disruption and that \u201cinsurers need to change their culture before they want to do Insurtech\u201d while Matthias emphasizes on the need for insurers to address customers\u2019 problems by being service-oriented and more transparent. <\/span><\/p>\n

The issue of data ownership and management was also brought up as a growing concern in our data-driven society where these data become more and more valuable. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some examples of good practices in the insurance industry have been brought up, though, such as the Firemark Labs in Australia and Singapore, backed by the Australian insurer IAG, that include incubation and innovation labs as well as a venture fund.<\/span><\/p>\n

Case study: Insurtech startup GoBear\u2019s visitors have been multiplied by 6 in a year<\/b><\/h2>\n

Marnix Zwart, SVP Product & Business Development from GoBear<\/a>, deeply believes that people are willing to get insurance online. His company\u2019s figures are quite impressive. Incorporated in 2014, the insurance comparator has jumped from 500 000 visitors last year to a whopping 3 million per month this year. <\/span><\/p>\n

GoBear is able to give a quote with only 4 to 5 questions. Marnix followed: \u201cPeople buy what other people buy, it\u2019s as simple as that. We share reviews and give a coverage score\u201d. Already comparing credit cards, loans, insurance (car, travel, accident), they will start life insurance this quarter. They plan to expand by giving traditional insurance players a \u201clife dashboard\u201d with insights on what people want (profile, product, price). They have already set up pilots with Allianz and Axa. <\/span><\/p>\n

How can Blockchain impact the insurance industry?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Two of the four cofounders: Mr Ashley Kee and Mr Ng Zhong Qin started peer-to-peer platform Bandboo to disrupt an outdated insurance industry. (Photo: Tang See Kit)<\/p><\/div>\n

Innovation in the value chain has also seen the emergence of new business models enabled by technologies such as the blockchain. Enabling a decentralized and inalienable record and transfer of data, the blockchain makes peer-to-peer insurance the new craze among insurance disrupters. Bandboo<\/a>, for example, is a young Singaporean startup exploring that new model. Using a transparent blockchain ledger, they connect a community of people to insure each other. Through a small monthly fee, the policy-holders can turn themselves to the community when needed with no actual insurance company involved as the transparency and safety of the blockchain serves as a safeguard against any abuse. \u00a0But Bandboo needs a significant mass of insurers (1000) to start operating.<\/span><\/p>\n

The blockchain brings a lot of exciting opportunities for insurers as it changes both customers and companies\u2019 behavior, introducing a new kind of trust in the relationship. The decentralized technology enhances:<\/span><\/p>\n

– Profile Information storage: with no need to have a central warehouse, insurers will be able to underwrite risks based on dynamic profile information rather than having outdated financial statements.<\/span><\/p>\n

– Process automatization: blockchain-enabled smart contracts will allow insurers to remove human stamping out of several processes. Bandboo<\/a> and Policypal<\/a>, for example, are exploring how to automatize the claim process through smart contracts<\/span><\/p>\n

– Regulatory requirements: digital signatures will allow regulators to speed up their process making the whole value chain more efficient<\/span><\/p>\n

In a nutshell, the insurance landscape is already and will continue to be subject to disruption. The emergence of new technologies, such as the blockchain is restoring trust and transparency, bringing new business models to life (P2P) and improving old ones. Overall, users have started going online to compare and subscribe to insurance policies with startups such as GoBear<\/a> or PolicyPal<\/a>. Traditional players need to adapt quickly to keep their consumer base.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Insurance companies are being heavily disrupted. Their business model has been around for millenniums with very few changes to it. But this time is over. As people are increasingly distrustful of insurance while having a legal requirement to buy one, an increasing need for disruption has appeared, in terms of transparency, easiness and availability of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":5556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52,49,77,464,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events-innovators","category-innovators-category","category-insurtech","category-south-east-asia-singapore-indonesia","category-startups-innovators"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationiseverywhere.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}