Introduction
According to an analysis of A.M. Best Data, the U.S. group benefits market was approximately $140 billion in 2016.
Increased customer expectations and new market entrants highlight the need for insurance carriers to bring new offerings to market that attract customers while cost-effectively servicing existing ones.
Insurance in the Cloud
Last year IBM, MetLife, and Majesco announced they are collaborating to develop a cloud-based insurance platform.
A press release on the IBM website stated that the platform would feature “cognitive computing, data analytics and integration and security capabilities designed to help insurers expand access to their products and capture new customers.”
“Cloud and consumption-based models free up capital invested in expensive legacy systems and give insurers the business flexibility to scale up businesses rapidly to take advantage of new market opportunities. Insurers can also realize significant cost savings over time as back-office innovation costs and functionality are shared among platform participants and third-party partners,” the press release stated.
In fact, on April 10 IBM unveiled its newest cloud-ready mainframes within the “IBM Z” server family.
Additionally, soon the platform will further evolve to have the ability to integrate with blockchain networks.
Earlier this year an insurtech startup called Slice rolled out Slice Insurance Cloud Services (ICS), another on-demand, cloud-based digital insurance platform.
The platform enables “the rapid introduction, evaluation, and adoption of new products, technologies and business models in response to the ever-changing insurance needs of customers.”
ICS doesn’t only benefit insureds — insurers can use it too.
The platform allows carriers to go digital while mitigating risk and expense.
Slice says that ICS can be easily integrated to establish and test insurance products digitally. There is also a subscription option for a monthly fee.
More features of ICS include:
- Pricing
- Rating
- Licensing
- Real-time and automated underwriting
- Servicing
- Fully embeddable via API
“Our vision was to build a digital insurer-as-a-service platform that performs significantly better in terms of speed and cost for both deployment, and, most importantly, the cost and expense of ongoing operations,” said Tim Attia, CEO of Slice, in a blog post from January.
“In the end, it’s all about customer experience, so we developed a platform that exponentially increases insurers’ speed to market, is infinitely scalable, and is signal-based so insurers can synchronize their product offerings with their customers’ behaviors,” he added.
Conclusion
Many companies are opting to license their software to other companies, highlighting a trend in collaboration among insurers.
For example, Lemonade allows other insurers to use its sales platform and API.
It’s clear that these companies are leading the way to cloud-based insurance policies. Will others follow?
