IN Digital Insuranceand especially at DIGIN, our goal is to provide our readers and delegates with the tools they need to succeed in a rapidly changing business environment.
That’s why we’re launching new carrier-exclusive workshops this year: This three-part educational course starts with two virtual sessions and concludes with an in-person session at DIGIN on June 5th in San Francisco. Our goal with the workshops is to raise the expectations and outcomes of training and education in the field of digital transformation in insurance. With three workshops to choose from, delegates can identify and participate in the opportunity best suited to their specific duties and fees at their insurance company.
If you’re still unsure, Editor-in-Chief Nathan Golia spoke with Forrester’s Ellen Carney, who is a master class instructor for Creating a technology stack strategy grade. The three sessions for this course are Understanding Your Technology Stack Upgrade, Assessing the Cost of Your Technology Stack and Assessing Risks and Potential Threats, and Implementing Your Technology Stack to Satisfy, Retain and Grow Customers. That’s what she wants to achieve with the master class initiative.
Digital Insurance: What makes the tech stack — lockdown and anti-digital, so to speak — important to understand:
Ellen Carney: What is becoming more and more important in technology stacks is how we can customize, modify and adapt the technology for our business. Things like APIs, low code/no code, and of course the cloud – you almost never hear of anyone doing anything that isn’t in the cloud at the moment.
This will have some interesting implications for the CIO role. Skills will change. We will have a more standardized view of how technology can be delivered to us, our customers and our partners, and the ways in which we are going to differentiate our business offerings on the platform – so to speak. because it will be a little more fluid and dynamic than concrete.
Digital Insurance: For years, “insurance tech” has revolved around software deployment in large enterprises. How has digital transformation and value chain participants changed that?
Ellen Carney: It becomes less important that you are the store of company X, and much more important that you have expanded the value of company X’s offer and used it as a foundational element. With these new features, we will be able to customize or code ourselves, or go out into the market and buy an API that connects to some really cool technology, cool system, or cool vendor. This will be the point of differentiation.
Digital Insurance: How does product strategy affect the types of platforms insurers should build on?
Ellen Carney: We have other distribution models that we are currently considering. This whole idea of inline insurance, I think traditional insurance companies are underestimating the impact that inline insurance will have on their brands, on their marketing and on their customer experience – especially in regards to a claim. When a customer needs service, they are introduced to that brand, not to the company that sold them the coverage. What will this experience be like? How are you going to replicate the simplicity and ease of what you might hope to get from a retailer, automaker, retail oil company, or anyone else who is now implementing auto insurance?
You still need claims, you still need invoices, you definitely still need a policy administrator. But how we’re going to make it more customer-friendly—more unique, simpler, lighter, and more responsive—will come from what we do with it ourselves.
Digital Insurance: How do you think your workshop can help insurance technology leaders understand the landscape of opportunity?
Ellen CarneyA: Well, that’s the idea of a “platform of platforms” that can be improved to function as a core system. We just have more options now. And it can be helpful for everyone to understand that there is a textbook point of view: “this would be the traditional path you could take.” But there are other things you could do as well. And I think that’s what our class will come to.
To learn more about DIGIN and each Masterclass course, Click here. Don’t miss the opportunity to join hundreds of insurance innovators in June. Register today.
