Insuretech - Hibernate or Inovate

The insurance industry is unique as it depends on two completely opposing constructs, the past and the future, in order to do business. It deals with the uncertainty and unpredictability of future events and its ability to do this enables society to evolve, innovate and create. Without insurance, satellites would not launch, medicines would not be released and the constantly heightening London skyline would stay at the levels of the Great Fire.

In order to be able to offer protection for the future, the insurance industry relies on data from historic events to predict, price and determine risk appetite. As well as understanding past events and predicting future risk, the industry also needs to ingest, process and react to real time data and this may also need to be shared with other connected parties and systems.

The insurance industry is now, more than ever, reliant on up-to-date and correct data. Whether it is analysing huge volumes of information relating to past claims, predicting changes in global weather patterns, catastrophe modelling or processing real time data: the better the investment in IT, the better the quality of data. So having a clear IT policy and an understanding of available, disruptive technologies will be key to success and bring insurance companies in line with the Lloyd’s TOM target of refreshing IT systems by 2021.

The Lloyd’s TOM (Target Operating Model) consultation resulted in a number of clear conclusions and one of these is that harnessing and sharing data will be key to the market’s successful evolution. What this means is that insurance firms need to consider data and how better use of innovative and disruptive technologies can drive better understanding and better quality decisions. Capturing data through mobile devices, sharing non-competitive data across the market, processing big data and driving quality through automation are all key factors in ensuring success in a competitive market.

We at ImageFast have come up with a model for utilising technologies such as mobile capture, scanning and data extraction, workflow and process automation, data processing and BI in order to drive efficiencies across the market. It is only by addressing data and exploiting disruptive technologies that this market will be able to evolve, adapt and compete.