Disruptive technologies, increased competition and economic pressures are causing P&C to look beyond traditional strategies.

A change is taking place in the general insurance industry. In this shift, some will emerge as leaders, many will be left behind, and another group may disappear from the market. The year 2016 continues with the disruption of the market. What are the forces that disrupt the market? How it affects processes and stakeholders is already a hot discussion. Now let’s dig deeper.

First and foremost is the disruption due to innovations and new product development. Innovations are great levelers and destroyers. Just look at the potential of IoT to change the insurance business. IoT is adding new tasks for insurers. Portable devices, automobiles, transmitters, medical equipment, security systems, doors, lights, etc., are providing insurers with market segmentation and creating new pricing models for the insurance market. generals.

The emergence of the sharing economy where assets are shared is creating opportunities for the property and casualty markets. This means that insurance companies must create new pricing models to take advantage of those assets.

Are the agents being replaced?

Digital technologies are throwing a monkey wrench into the established property and casualty markets. Before digitization threatens, insurers employ agents to educate customers. But the growing phenomenon of digitization is slowly removing the key role agents play as the conduit between insurers and customers. For example, Google Compare helps customers compare different products online, where customers can purchase the products directly from the insurer. This can influence the premium, as commissions paid to agents may be given as a discount to the customer.

cyber security

Thanks to digitization, P&C customers expect personalized services like anytime, anywhere access. This is making customers where Millennials are targeted happy and at the same time opening up risks like cyber security and hacking. Such risks can affect the credibility of insurance companies. Today, IT solutions come with additional built-in layers of protection to protect data assets.

telematics

The growing connected car with mobile telematics applications is redefining traditional pricing models. The traditional model is being replaced by usage-based insurance (UBI). This will allow drivers to get discounts on their behavior behind the wheel. The lower the risk, the lower the premium. This trend is opening up opportunities for mobile application providers to introduce premium features in mobile telematics applications. User-friendly features like gamification and ancillary services like roadside assistance are just a few examples to cite.

big data

Subscription implies the collection of information with precision and accuracy. Big data is shaking up the property and casualty insurance industry. Big data technologies help make underwriting effective with crime statistics and risk assessment, leading to greater accuracy in the underwriting process that benefits all stakeholders.

Personalized customer experience

P&C is a competitive and cost-sensitive industry that requires customer engagement to connect through personalized communications, thorough assessments, and fast claims. Personalized customer experience results in customer retention. Therefore, robust mobility solutions are required for insurance companies to initiate policy issuance, claims processing without physically going to the insurer.

Love it or hate it, insurance companies can’t avoid cloud computing to align with customers who prefer to access their businesses through their mobile devices. Therefore, insurance mobility is the key for P&C insurers. Key brokerage, claims, underwriting, reinsurance and accounting must be enabled with solutions to consistently expedite customer claims and assessments, at reduced cost. The end result here is to reduce claims processing time. This will help improve customer engagement through multi-channel delivery for customers. Plus, this makes it easy to schedule appointments, report misses, and receive notifications when needed.