Insurtech and Insurance 4.0 – are you ready to cooperate?
It was a breakfast seminar with a full agenda when Itello invited us to the autumn Morning Insights at GT30 in Stockholm. Michal Gromek, Jaakko Olkkonen and Henrik Allert gave a presentation on what Insurance 4.0 means for the life and pensions insurance industry, how players within life and pensions should deal with the new eco-system, and how the healthtech company Wellmo is bringing benefits to insurance companies and their customers. This is our summary of the event.
Right now a comprehensive eco-system of new Insurtech companies is being built up in parallel with the established eco-systems within the insurance industry. In order to succeed in this landscape, insurance companies need to adapt and develop their traditional roles, processes and services, and seek partnerships with new players.
The Nordic Insurtech landscape – innovation through partnerships
Michal Gromek, a leading expert on Insurtech, talked about the growing eco-system within Insurtech, which is expected to have a major impact on the insurance industry, and stated that technology has developed a lot and the industry enjoys a high level of quality and growth of investments, allowing for more situation and behaviour-based insurance schemes to be offered.
Michal also highlighted the need for insurance companies and Insurtech companies to cooperate in order to drive innovation forward and achieve success. However, we need to be aware of and overcome a number of complex challenges that come with potential collaboration; above all, old and inflexible core systems, difficulties understanding internal processes, and the fact that it takes time to establish a new partnership. Moreover, studies show that confidence in start-ups is low, and start-ups, in turn, find that the traditional players are not doing enough to collaborate with them.
For advice on how these challenges can be addressed and a deeper insight into the Nordic eco-system in regard to Insurtech, read the Nordic Insurtech Report (written by Michal Gromek, Henrik Allert and Matt Broniarek). The report covers more trends and insights, and can be downloaded here.
The speakers’ presentations!
Download the presentations here
Wellmo – a pioneer within healthtech
Healthtech is hotter than ever, but a lot of people wonder what is actually happening within the industry? One thing is for sure, and that is the fact that the digitalisation of health care in the Nordic countries has moved to the top of the list of issues to get to grips with. Jaakko Olkkonen, founder and CEO of the healthtech company Wellmo in Finland, believes that the biggest change that is happening now is patient-driven, and that health care will not be operated in the same way in the future as it is in a lot of countries at present.
Wellmo helps insurance companies to create digital care services that make a difference, and which are being continuously developed on the basis of measurable results. One of the many successful client cases is Local Tapiola Life, the largest life insurance provider in Finland and market leader in digital life insurance schemes.
In 2015 Local Tapiola wanted to develop a strategy to bring all digital health services under one single insurance umbrella service, in order to better respond to customers’ constantly changing needs. The result was Smart Life Insurance, run by Wellmo, which was launched in 2016. The service was a great success as the end customer could gain access to everything, from digital coaching programmes, health care, electronic health checks and medical assistance, in one and the same app. Since Smart Life Insurance, Local Tapiola has increased its customer commitment through advanced data analysis which helps them to better understand their customers.
Read more about the exciting projects that Wellmo has been engaged in at www.wellmo.com.
The future of the insurance industry
Henrik Allert, Strategic Product Manager at Itello, pointed out that, like all other branches of industry, the insurance industry was moving towards Industry 4.0.
We are living in exciting times, and dozens of opportunities await us. Current technological investments deal, first and foremost, with improved customer experience and reduced costs, but business models will be developed all the more in times to come. Sensors, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are creating new opportunities in all forms of real-time monitoring, which can be used within health care insurance, amongst other things.
By increasing cooperation with tech companies and platform providers, insurance companies will strengthen their customer offering. But a number of challenges remain, for example, many are struggling with their IT legacy and have numerous complex technical challenges to overcome.
Considering the developments in the industry, it’s important to have a variable system. Digitalisation is advancing at an incredible rate now. We may have some idea about what will be happening in two years’ time. But we haven’t got a clue about what’s going to happen in five years. So it pays to have a future-safe solution, which will put you in a better position to take new technologies and new types of digital methods on board.
Henrik Allert,
Strategic Product Management, Itello.
