Insurtech may be the word on everybody’s lips at the moment, but what impact could the advent of tech have on insurance jobs?
As automation and other forms of technology are increasingly used in the industry many would think that jobs would be impacted but the founder of one insurtech firm thinks that the jobs being lost are already on the way out.
Scott Walchek, founder of on-demand insurance provider Trōv, told
Insurance Business that when people ask whether insurtech will take away jobs from the industry, his first response is to suggest that a future that embraces technology will likely not have a place for certain jobs anyway.
“Whether we are doing it or another person is doing it, it is actually what the consumer wants. The consumer is signalling.
“You signal that you don’t want to ever talk to a human, you don’t want to go to a bank and talk to them about your services. It is the consumer that is signalling those things so it is a question of whether those jobs will exist in the future anyway?
“And the answer is probably not.”
Walchek stressed that the while the industry is changing, on a jobs front it will still take some time to iron out complexities through the use of technology. Walchek highlighted commercial insurance and healthcare as two areas that will require the human touch for the coming years but said that intermediaries face tough road ahead.
“I think there is a great deal of pressure on intermediaries serving the new generation,” Walchek continued.
“There is still a long time when this existing book of business is going to run off but I think the new book of business is forward facing.”
Trōv, which allows consumers to arrange cover at the swipe of a smartphone, is currently available in Australia with plans to expand to the United States and Europe with further Asia Pacific launches also on the horizon.
“We are at this Janus-faced moment where incumbents are looking at their existing book of business and the industry that they have built around it and are wondering how do they rationally run that business off over time while they are also facing the other direction and thinking there is a little bit of existential risk,”Walchek continued.
“The backward facing guys, they were fully dependent on their agents and brokers and their existing, arcane practices.
“The forward looking guy is a whole different world and that is a little scary for people and is such an interesting moment to define.”
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