Insurance companies of all types are failing when it comes to getting documents and forms off of paper and into digital formats.
The global insurance industry is trailing other sectors when it comes to the transition to digital. That’s the finding of a survey by Bain & Company, which polled 70 life and P&C insurers and discovered that insurance executives have a lack of confidence in adopting digital technologies.
Almost half of the companies surveyed said they don't believe they have an achievable plan, and 60 per cent are missing some key elements for the journey, such as a clear vision or compliance and risk processes. This puts the industry at odds with consumers who are demanding more digital channels for their insurance transactions.
“I don’t know if you heard about the big insurance company fiasco last summer where they launched a digital application and the world went to pieces because it didn’t work,” Smeenk-Pritchard told WP when asked about the insurance industry’s lack of digitization. “I don’t know who forgot to test what but it was a really ugly, nasty mess that is still backlogged.”
Another challenge with the industry here in Canada, says Smeenk-Pritchard, is a reluctance to go to a generic application and in so doing, each company builds their own, which is expensive.
This lag in adopting digital technologies is allowing competitors from outside the industry to muscle in: "Insurers are finding it difficult to simply keep up with the customer's digital demands, much less imagine a digital future for themselves and the industry," said Gunther Schwarz, head of Bain's insurance sector globally and co-author of the report. "As a result, they've left the door open for a new breed of companies – mostly tech start-ups – to chip away at the insurance market."
More than 20 percent of companies surveyed are not on a clear path and, with some of the lowest levels of digitalization, face a significant disadvantage in making a successful digital transition.
"Today's innovations will be tomorrow's standard practices, so there is little time for insurers to waste in stepping up their digital investments. The goal of our research is to help insurance executives understand where to start and how to execute their digital strategies," said Harshveer Singh, leader of Bain's life insurance sector in Asia-Pacific. The full report is at Bain.com
Almost half of the companies surveyed said they don't believe they have an achievable plan, and 60 per cent are missing some key elements for the journey, such as a clear vision or compliance and risk processes. This puts the industry at odds with consumers who are demanding more digital channels for their insurance transactions.
“I don’t know if you heard about the big insurance company fiasco last summer where they launched a digital application and the world went to pieces because it didn’t work,” Smeenk-Pritchard told WP when asked about the insurance industry’s lack of digitization. “I don’t know who forgot to test what but it was a really ugly, nasty mess that is still backlogged.”
Another challenge with the industry here in Canada, says Smeenk-Pritchard, is a reluctance to go to a generic application and in so doing, each company builds their own, which is expensive.
This lag in adopting digital technologies is allowing competitors from outside the industry to muscle in: "Insurers are finding it difficult to simply keep up with the customer's digital demands, much less imagine a digital future for themselves and the industry," said Gunther Schwarz, head of Bain's insurance sector globally and co-author of the report. "As a result, they've left the door open for a new breed of companies – mostly tech start-ups – to chip away at the insurance market."
More than 20 percent of companies surveyed are not on a clear path and, with some of the lowest levels of digitalization, face a significant disadvantage in making a successful digital transition.
"Today's innovations will be tomorrow's standard practices, so there is little time for insurers to waste in stepping up their digital investments. The goal of our research is to help insurance executives understand where to start and how to execute their digital strategies," said Harshveer Singh, leader of Bain's life insurance sector in Asia-Pacific. The full report is at Bain.com
