After years of disruption, the insurance industry has its sights set on change – the problem is that transformation often feels out of reach, or firms don’t know where to start.

From speaking to our customers, we know that many want to embrace innovative technologies but remain stuck with costly and outdated IT systems.

It all seems a long way from the UK government's vision of a ‘vibrant, innovative and internationally competitive insurance industry’ which it set out last year as part of its plans to reform Solvency II.

Transformation might be easier said than done in a tightly regulated sector, and firms may be particularly nervous about making wholesale changes in the current climate. Surely, they might reason, it’s better to ride out the storm and avoid anything that exposes them to risk.

With change comes opportunity

But large-scale transformation doesn’t have to be risky. In fact, with the right strategy and technology behind it, it can mitigate threats and help businesses to become highly agile, resilient, and able to make the most of every commercial opportunity.

But firms won’t be able to achieve this if they’re still working with outdated technology, which results in data being siloed in different systems, in various parts of the business, and staff relying heavily on manual processes.

Instead, they need to be bold and ambitious and reimagine how every part of the business operates and connects – from customer experience (CX) and pricing, to risk and fraud prevention.

At SAS, we have created a new eBook that details the 4 key areas of transformation that are absolutely critical for insurance organisations and how you can act upon them today. Here is a sneak peek:

4 key areas of transformation

1. Create customer experiences to remember
   This is nothing new but is more important than ever. Your customers expect to be seen as the individuals they are and not as siloed policies. Whilst interacting with your organisation, whether researching, buying, renewing, or moving through the claims process they want you to make their lives easier. Insurers that can’t deliver this are at risk of losing customers, revenues, shareholder value and market position.
2. Eliminate the impact of financial crime on your business
   Times of economic hardship that we are experiencing currently are often seen in parallel with an increase in the detection of fraud and financial crime. However, detection is the key, and it is still far from perfect. Should insurers just accept at least some portion of loses as an unwritten cost of doing business? Absolutely not.
3. Navigate compliance with confidence
   IFRS17, 2022’s pricing regulation and 2023’s Consumer Duty. All these regulations are non-negotiable for insurers. But how can you join the dots to allow IT, actuaries, accountants, and audit partners to come together to address new regulations? It simply cannot happen easily if traditional manual and siloed ways of working persist. Insurers need to maintain a competitive advantage by remaining compliant and getting ahead of regulatory reporting and decisioning goals by ensuring data consistency, transparency, and complete traceability.
4. Deliver pricing that is always on point
   The life of an individual or business is never a linear journey throughout the year. There are always ups and downs and corners to navigate. With so much data available to further understand this journey and predict future needs and risk profiles, insurers are now far more able to truly personalise products – and more importantly – pricing. This allows you to deliver a more accurate, personalised response back to the customer whilst also reducing further risk to your business.

This eBook acts as a practice guide on how you can solve the challenges around transformation, with a combination of analytics and AI, underpinned by SAS’ long-standing experience in the insurance industry. Each transformation area is supported with a real-life story in which we have helped one of our customers reimagine the possible.

It's all in the data

We show how insurers can create a single cloud-based ‘decisioning brain’ that integrates and enriches data from seemingly disparate parts of the business. Processed and operationalised in real time, it provides a clear picture of what’s happening, supporting sound decision-making, and ultimately delivering value to both customers and the business.

All this can be accomplished within a framework that promotes compliance across the business with data consistency, transparency, and complete traceability. Senior leaders increasingly recognise the role analytics plays in transformation and as many as 64% of CIOs plan to increase their investments in business intelligence and analytics, according to Gartner. We argue this will only increase in the years to come and forward-thinking insurers will be the ones to reap the benefits.

Download your free copy of Reimagine Insurance: The 4 key pillars of Insurance transformation.