At the 2023 InsurTechNY Spring Conference, Peter Meyers, VP of Solutions and Technology for Navy Mutual, spoke on March 30 during a session titled “The Path to a Complete Digital Renewal at Navy Mutual.” In his Ted-style talk, he outlined the insurance company’s approach to digital transformation and the challenges it faced in the process.
Meyers explained that he knew that every existing process had to be evaluated and analyzed in order to achieve the company’s high-tech vision. He noted that, as a starting point, the security and protection of digital systems was a critical step in digital renewal.
“When I first came on board, one of the first things we started with was cybersecurity. This is the basis of everything that follows it,” Meyers said. “[As a] A risk-averse life insurance company, we needed to have one to make sure we could build on it, especially when moving to the cloud.”
With a strong internal team overseeing the defense of the insurer’s cybersecurity measures, Navy Mutual has begun additional assessments of the company’s entire digital ecosystem.
“One of the things we did was we broke that process down into the old adage, “People, Processes, and Technology,” in that order. We’ve made sure we have key people inside, changed some of the hiring methods…” Meyers. said. “So we were able to take…new approaches. We also spun off a dedicated life and annuity group from the consulting group, which could go up and down, and we brought in new technology providers…”
Navy Mutual assessed that 99 systems were identified as key technologies, but presented a challenge because “each one was implemented in different years and at different points in time,” Meyers said. Meyers added that the siled tech ecosystem poses many challenges. It remained for the insurer to determine how best to approach the overall transformation.
“Therefore, the opportunity to become a high-tech [vision] what we wanted to achieve, we basically had two options. First, we could go with one of the big established providers, someone we’ve worked with in the past that has a complete ecosystem. As you can see, this is a safer option – proven technology, the big guys use it, but we will be small fish in a very large pond. We must be sure that we can adapt to these processes. Another option that was considered risky is an integration strategy.”
Meyers explained that after weighing these two different options, the company ultimately settled on the latter.
“Finally we really liked the idea of having an integration strategy and really focusing on best in class [applications]keeping a flexible approach, which means we could start with this integration strategy… And then we started looking for best-in-class applications… then we figured we could implement all of these systems within 12 months.”
He stressed the importance of strategy development and planning. Navy Mutual is currently still underway. Meyers concluded the session by emphasizing the importance of adaptability and flexibility in this period of change, which can and likely will create unexpected challenges.
“Some General Vision Changes [include] adaptability. I think this is the basics, but it gives you an idea of the starting point. We have people who go to conferences, come back and [say] “It’s a great API integration…” Bringing in vendor and process experts, having the right people, hiring external staff across the country, and actually building an internal team to support the processes will create that vision and help manage these external resources.”
