There is consensus in the insurance industry that digital disruption is here to stay, with many advising that the industry fully acknowledge and utilise the technologies relevant to the sector.
However, not much has been said as to how this should be done.
According to
PwC partner and innovation leader Andy Symons, the solution to successfully commercialising emerging technology is to start with a strong vision and operating model as well as a focus on the customer experience – not just the technology.
He explained that the recipe for success is to have reliable data that is correctly stored and accessed as well as the ability to combine emerging technologies with good innovation capabilities that can result in something with commercial value.
“Building increased innovation into a company culture isn’t easy, but it’s something every organisation is going to have to focus on if they want to be future leaders. It requires commitment from all levels in the organisation,” he explained.
He said that insurance is among the sectors – including government and financial services and healthcare – that has a stronger focus on artificial intelligence.
“These industries have significant scale issues and they need to transform to align with customer expectations. They understand the fact that they need to take their customer service to a whole new level in a scalable, smart way,” said Symons.
He said that over the last few years there has been the emergence of robo-advice, automation of application and production processes, content and product recommendations, and more automated driving assistance.
“Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) are currently the most advanced of the emerging technologies in New Zealand,” he explained.
Some of the longer-term predictions, according to Symons, are highly personalised service products tailored to match customer preferences, driverless and on-demand public transport, and higher levels of smart customer services that empower consumers and businesses and make lives easier.
“These are just the solutions we can predict now but potential opportunities for commercialising innovation will come from areas we haven’t even thought of yet – this is the nature of disruption and the global market that companies now operate in,” emphasised Symons.
He said the role of business leaders is to remain focused on their enterprise strategy and to work through what artificial intelligence might mean for them and their customers.
“Also, they will have to experiment with talent and culture in a fast, dynamic and cost effective way so that they can deliver on the potential that artificial intelligence brings,” he said.
“Smart organisations are already experimenting with incorporating artificial intelligence-driven solutions and propositions into their organisations. The successful ones will have a strong sense of their enterprise strategy and therefore how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, will feed into the customer problems that they want to solve.”
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