Day 1 Highlights

Sponsored by

sponsors

Insurance Innovators USA today hosted the movers, shakers, disruptors and influencers in Nashville, Tennessee to shine a light on the cutting-edge innovations and emerging trends that that are shaping the future of insurance. Carter Lawrence, Tennessee Government’s Commissioner for Commerce & Insurance, hailed the buzzing energy of an event that is 30 per cent larger than last year, signalling a mood of optimism and excitement in what Chetan Kandhari, Chief Innovation and Digital Officer & SVP of Nationwide Mutual Insurance, called a “golden era of innovation.”

This optimism defies the macro-economic headwinds now buffeting the industry. “We’ve seen the first contraction in InsurTech funding since 2016,” noted Stefan Holzberger, Chief Rating Officer of AM Best, which has been tracking the performance of insurance companies and plotting that against their commitment to innovation.

“Innovators are consistently able to achieve premium growth in excess of the market and in excess of their competitors who are not as far along in their innovation journeys,” said Holzberger. “There’s also a correlation between the level of innovation and efficient operations and expense ratios.”

Here, he was preaching to the converted, with speakers and delegates clearly enthused by the possibilities posed by rapid advances in technology. “Superiority in advanced analytics will give competitive advantage that lasts for years, if not decades,” said Andreas Kleiner, CEO & President of American Modern Insurance Group.

AI: accelerating innovation

Generative AI such as ChatGBT inevitably came in for a lot of discussion. “In 2019 I predicted that in three to four years natural language processing would end up revolutionising the claims process and in that timeline we’ve seen the rise of ChatGBT,” said Grace Hanson, Chief Claims Officer at Hippo Insurance.

Marcus Rohlfs, Scouting and Ventures Director of State Farm, said the rise of generative AI was “so exciting”.  “It will allow us to ingest an enormous range of unstructured data and almost immediately generate insights,” he said. “We cannot imagine where this will go.”

Marcus Rohlfs, Scouting and Ventures Director of State Farm, said the rise of generative AI was “so exciting”.  “It will allow us to ingest an enormous range of unstructured data and almost immediately generate insights,” he said. “We cannot imagine where this will go.”

Alongside generative AI, the highly anticipated Leaders’ Forum listed connected data, climate risk, the shifting landscape created by a new fleet of vehicles, embedded insurance and more dynamic and predictive modelling as key trends to watch.

​

Humans: still in the loop

Despite the focus on digitisation and automation, it’s clear that humans still have a key role in the industry. “We do not think agents and brokers are going away,” said Ori Ben-Yishai of Viewpoint.

“App users can buy insurance, make claims, and use vouchers that we offer as loyalty benefits, and there’s a range of driving capabilities there as well, including parking, gasoline, carwash tickets, and car appraisals,” Larsen explained.

Embedded insurance, in which insurance is bundled in with the asset being purchased, is seen as another major trend. “I always say follow the money,” said Marcus Rohlfs of Statefarm, “and if you look at Silicon Valley then it’s still backing embedded insurance with a lot of resources.”

One thing is clear: all of this effort and investment is absolutely essential because customers now have very different expectations of their financial service providers. “The pandemic was an accelerator of these customer trends,” said Chad Sands, IT leader and architect at State Farm, who said omnichannel, transparency, empathy and simplicity are increasingly hygiene factors for today’s connected customer.

As Day 1 of the Summit draws to a close, delegates are looking forward to the After Party and a second day of further expert insight and discussion from across the insurance sector.