what insurance industry cios predict about insurtech in 2017?, IT News, ET CIO

Bangalore: The insurance sector is slowly but certainly going big on leveraging technologies. Insurance technology, popularly known as insurtech primarily aims to help insurance companies to improve its services and business operations with better reach and connect with their customers and benefiting them overall.

However, it also offers huge opportunities for technology vendors, financial platform companies as well as third party services and solutions providers to come up with insurance industry specific technologies.

The global insurtech market is expected to grow steadily over the next four years with a CAGR of more than 10% by 2020, according to research firm Technavio’s recent market research.

The research predicts the insurance industry offers a big scope for innovation that links insurance and payment platforms through partnerships and leveraging mobile and smart devices for enhancing customer services. It states that insurtech in way will give rise to a new ecosystem of insurers, tech vendors, payment platforms and whole lot of third party services and solutions providers including online players.

In fact, many of top chief information officers (CIOs) and IT decision markets (ITDMs) across large insurance companies are predicting that insurtech in 2017 is going to change insurance industry’s face like never before in the past.

Vikas Gujral, Chief Operating Officer - Max Bupa Health Insurance

The future will be either creating your own ‘ecosystems’ or ride on other ecosystem to have an integrated end to end offering for the consumers. This will encompass all the buzzwords that all of us are hearing all around us like Internet of Things (IoT), intelligent apps etc. Internet of things will not only help in improved conversion, enhance stickiness with the customers but will also enable the insurers in risk prevention and portfolio management.

Use case for Artificial intelligence (AI) is another area that some of the insurers are currently actively working on. Hybrid cloud is another trend that will be very strategic for enterprises as it provides the most desirable elasticity and reach across a wider ecosystem. In order to leverage this capability, the capability for seamless “plumbing” using APIs via a service integration layer (which can integrate across on premise as well as cloud), will be a key ask for all strategic IT initiatives.

Lastly, I feel some innovative and breakthrough technology enablers like Blockchain and SDN will provide significant benefits for health insurance and overall Insurance sector as they allow for significant scalability for business. Max Bupa has strong focus on utilizing the technology to deliver the best in class service and an overwhelming experience to its customers, partners and emp

via cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com