Insurtech: A Global Conversation
Insurtech Talk

“I think insurtech is both a threat and an opportunity. I don’t think it’s the case that these insurtech companies are going to grow from nothing to being dominant insurance companies overnight. I think the regulation will temper some of that speed. I think if there are progressive, forward-looking insurers that do adopt this technology either by partnering or acquiring, they could improve certain aspects of the insurance industry quite materially. For them, it’s an opportunity therefore by definition in a competitive market, for others, it’s a threat. Additionally, not only is there a threat from within competitors in the insurance industry, I think there’s always an existential risk from outside. We see many surveys around the world indicating that consumers would be quite happy to buy insurance from the likes of Amazon. The chance of a retail giant, an online retail giant teaming up with some of this insurtech capability and doing something quite disruptive, I think is increasing. There’s a little bit of risk there from outside the industry as well, so it’s a bit of both.”

“Insurance, as an industry, is getting massively disrupted at this point in time. No matter what we say, insurance is still a very under-penetrated financial instrument out there in the market. The way customers have to discover insurance is becoming easier. Insurtech is helping significantly in that, helping even digitize the first product that a customer has a need to buy and actually goes and seeks and buys. Beyond that, a customer is usually unaware or does not consciously recognize most of his needs. That’s where digitizing and disrupting, how the front-line behaves, matters a lot. With insurtech coming in, the front-line salesperson can become smarter, be more aware of his customer’s needs even before he meets the customer, be able to figure out the right solution for the customer rather than selling the products he has in his portfolio, and hopefully be able to be much more responsive and much more engaging with his end customers. If AI can do that for any future insurance agent or a salesperson, then it will have helped them be way more productive but keep the human touch within that sales process.”

“If you look at markets like China, South Korea, and things like that you can see how fast the pace of change is, but other markets are really slow. Perhaps they don’t have the scale for that to take place. There’s a lot going on in insurtech, even in smaller markets like Hong Kong and Singapore. That same geometric versus linear argument applies. They’re a little bit further behind on the curve.”