COVID-19 requires our industry to move immediately to meet insured’s needs and protect our companies and employees. Then we need to take a breath and think. Necessity is the mother of Innovation, and now is the time to put our capability as an industry to innovate to work. Here’s how.
We need to mobilize. COVID-19 will change how we work, live, travel, and socialize forever. First, we need to respond to the current situation. Second, prepare for what comes next. We need to make pandemic risk more transparent, and improve our ability to help the world predict, prevent, mitigate and recover from it. We’ve never been as prepared to address a global challenge like this with innovation as we are now. We need to harness the emerging technology and innovation coursing through the industry and put it to work to address this global challenge.
Impact: The world is going into lockdown mode. Insureds and insurers staff will be sheltering in place. Those infected will be quarantined and unable to work. Services from healthcare to auto and home repair won’t be readily available. Our normal processes that involve physical contact or labor will be interrupted. New exposures in cyber risk, physical safety, substance abuse, business continuation and best practices will emerge. Less experienced workers will be tasked to take on more difficult tasks. Policyholders and insurers will scramble to assess changes in regulatory requirements and coverages. Fraudulent claims will escalate as the economic impact deepens. And that’s the tip of the iceberg.
Response: we need to find ways to use technology and innovation to address the needs of our insureds, protect our staffs and dramatically improve our ability to operate through telepresence and remote working. We also need to protect our own solvency. And, we need to accelerate the world’s ability to make pandemic risk more transparent, and to predict, prevent, mitigate and recover from it more effectively. That means coming together to drive innovative solutions and processes that address those issues. We’d like your immediate help in two areas
Speaking in and or sponsoring our webinar series. “COVID-19 and Insurance: Impact, Response, & Innovation”. Please contact me at mike@sviaccelerator.com, if you have ideas or solutions that will help the industry.
Join NewTech Match and tell the world how you can help. NewTech Match is our Global Online Innovation Community & Marketplace, it’s free. Sign up at newtechmatch.com and share your capabilities, initiatives, and blog posts with the world.
Register for the first episode using this link “Optimizing Claims Response in the Face of a Pandemic”. The webinar will air March 30 at 11:00 AM PST.
Innovation Themes:
Response & Recovery. Prevention & Mitigation. Next-Gen Product & Operations Models
As an industry, there are three major areas we need to drive innovation in. Responding to the immediate situation and helping insured’s recover, Preventing and Mitigating the spread of this and future pandemics, and building digital generation product and operational models that more effectively address the changing risk and operational environment created by pandemics.
Response and Recovery
Optimizing Claims Response in the Face of a Pandemic
Impact: Much of the world is now or shortly will go into lockdown mode. Insureds, staff from insurers and third party adjusters will likely be sheltering in place. Those adversely affected by the virus will be quarantined and unable to work. This means we need to find ways to use technologies to capture and adjudicate non pandemic and pandemic related claims remotely and do so with fewer less experienced staff. As the pandemic takes hold policy holders will place virus related claims not knowing whether their policy covers that or not or with the expectation that governments may force underwriters to cover the claims in the near future. As the economic impact deepens fraudulent claims will increase as people try to find a way to get cash to survive.
Technology & Innovation Examples
- AI, ML, & RPA enabled remote capture and processing of claims, fraud, & litigation
- Augmenting claims data with weather, social media, & government sources
- Intelligent chatbots that support and integrate the above along with local guidelines and services availability, and claims status
- Remote working environments that help workers stay virtually connected, healthy and motivated using gamification and behavioral science.
- Cross industry data and reporting on the impact and progression of claim profiles and challenges as the virus and government measures to mitigate it progress.
Managing Financial Exposure & Compliance
Impact: Covid-19 and Future Pandemics can dramatically impact an insurer’s financial solvency and resilience. Increased claims, government mandated coverage changes, employee absences and illnesses, unknown aggregate risks in the policy in force portfolio, drops in investment portfolio value and returns are just a few of the factors that impact the insurer’s solvency and resilience.
Examples of Coverages that may be impacted:
- Life, Health, Annuities, Group Benefits
- Workers Compensation
- Travel
- Commercial Property
- Business Continuity
- Liability Insurance: CGL, D&O, E&O,
- Trade Credit
Technology & Innovation Examples
- AI, ML, & RPA best practices and tools to automate reviews of underwriting and inforce policies to determine individual and aggregate exposure
- Databases on legislative changes
- ML & AI solutions to assess and mitigate investment portfolio risk
- Databases of insurance and reinsurance appetite for new risks and portfolios impacted by government and pandemic related risks
- AI & ML tools to assess and report on solvency & compliance
Enabling Customer Recovery In a Pandemic
Impact: Covid-19 and Future Pandemics can dramatically impact insureds’ access to the services and materials required to recover from accidents, natural hazards, injury, illness or other harms. Even getting payments can be difficult. Optimizing your ability to mobilize and connect insureds to those resources during a pandemic is critical but extremely challenging when both your and provider resources are operationally compromised. It can also be the difference in whether claim costs escalate and whether you gain, keep or lose customers and agents.
Technology & Innovation Examples
- Creation of data and analytic models that combine population, facility, disease spread and availability and demand for recovery and care provider services & resources.
- Data and models that analyze and report on treatment outcomes
- Validating, Connecting and Managing Pandemic Ready and available Service and Care Providers
- Education and gamification through apps and social media of preventative measures in the home, workplace and communities
- Proactive communication with insureds that provide them policy and coverage analysis of existing policies as regulatory changes take place and direct them to the best approach for pandemic related claims.
Optimizing Transparency, Prediction, Prevention and Mitigation
Impact: The impact on individual insureds, communities, and economies of Covid-19 and Future Pandemics can be dramatically reduced by preemptive measures that help predict and mitigate the spread of the contagion.
Technology & Innovation Examples
- Data and Analytics on the Physical, Mental, & Operational Impact on Individuals, Businesses & Responders and best practices based on outcomes
- Early warning & realtime information exchange on contagions, impact, best practice responses, services and resources availability including data from IoT enabled devices
- Mobilization of local support resources for at risk individuals and populations.
- Behavioral reinforcement models and solution including social communication, gamification, and reporting
- Validating, Connecting and Managing Pandemic Ready Service and Care Providers
Customer Centric Innovation Challenges & Opportunities for Insurers
Impact: As discussed we will work, live, travel, and socialize very differently in a post COVID-19 world. Those changes will shift risk pools and create new ones.
Risks and liabilities will change for businesses, transportation, travel and hospitality services, care facilities, or even individuals. More people will work from home increasing cyber risk. Local and international supply chains will be impacted. Entry and exit requirements for cross border travel will change. Telehealth, elder and self care will surge. Online educational, sporting, entertainment, and religious services will surge online. And again, that’s the tip of the Iceberg.
Technology & Innovation Examples
Many of the things discussed in the sections above can be brought into post pandemic generation insurance business and product models.
Beyond that we need insurance business and product models that dramatically improve transparency, prediction, prevention, mitigation and recovery. Those models need to proactively protect and guide individuals, businesses, communities, industries, nations and the world in the face of pandemics. They need to provide and guide funding and safeguards that protect those different levels of our society with capabilities that address the interdependencies between them. And, they need to help build and become an interoperable part of the digital ecosystems that those different sectors operate within.
Operational Innovation Challenges & Opportunities
Impact: Covid-19 will change insurance products, business models, distribution and processes. It will redefine what it takes to successfully lead and manage insurance companies. And, it will dramatically accelerate the digitization of the insurance world. Digital leaders will accelerate their deployment of digitally enabled solutions to address the operational realities of COVID-19 and what it leaves in its wake.
They will turn that new found digital and innovation prowess to develop new ways to define and manage their business and accelerate their ability to compete as a fully digital and highly responsive insurer.
Technology & Innovation Examples
Again, many of the things we discussed above and support operational innovation when deployed on a larger scale. The key areas where we need to focus technology and innovation from an operational perspective include
- Interoperating with Digital Ecosystems
- Digitally Born Policy Management, Underwriting, Claims, and Compliance Processes
- Digital Distribution Augmentation, Development and Management
- Supporting real time data driven business models and products
- Creating, empowering and managing a virtual work environment
We’d like to share your vision and innovative solutions and services
Lets us know what you are doing to address the challenges and opportunities created by COVID-19 and future pandemics. As stated earlier, the best way to do that is to participate in our webinar series and share your information on our NewTech Match platform.
We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you on NewTech Match.
Mike Connor
