On Thursday, about 220 delegates representing nearly 80 insurance industry firms attended the Resonate 2024 event in Auckland. The idea behind the gathering was to showcase leading technology and bring together a full spectrum of stakeholders, including insurtechs and investors.
The aim is to help fast track the adoption of innovation across the insurance value chain.
“We're delighted with the turnout,” said Shaun Quincey, Simfuni CEO and the event organiser. “I don't think we could have had a better day.”
Quincy was impressed by the spirit of collaboration.
“The highlight for me was the willingness of the enterprise organizations and the more established insurance distributors to talk to the startups and open their doors to the conversations that are required to give the startups a chance,” he said.
These conversations, he said, will also likely lead to an acceleration in the “transformational journeys” of these established firms.
“Seeing the conversations right now while I'm talking to you, it's absolutely a perfect outcome,” he said to Insurance Business New Zealand, who was the Event Partner.
A presentation from Deloitte’s partner, Kylie Bryant, underlined the importance of these conversations and the urgent need for them to lead to substantial changes across the industry.
“The key thing here is we're at a crossroads,” said Bryant. “There's economic uncertainty, changing customer demands, insurers are struggling with growth and constrained by the regulatory agenda.”
She discussed a timely Deloitte report, released on the day of the event, that looked at both the Australia and New Zealand insurance industries. The report, she said, aimed to answer four questions, all of them relevant to delegates at the Simfuni event:
Bryant said the broad reason for insurers seeking collaboration is for expertise and help with cost efficiencies and technology.
“While the insurtechs are looking for rapid innovation, customer reach and growth,” she said.
Bryant explained motivations behind the “extremely important” industry level collaborations that are taking place and that Resonate is trying to encourage.
“The first one is knowledge sharing,” said Bryant. “This seems to be the biggest reason for both traditional insurers and insurtechs.”
Insurers also want to stay competitive, she said, while insurtechs are often looking to strengthen relationships and leverage channels.
Brooke Roberts, co-CEO of the investment platform Sharesies also spoke. Her investment platform is reported to have about 700,000 New Zealanders on it.
She said it was “cool” to be at this event, her first insurance conference.
“We've obviously seen that evolution in insurance from being a broker, to direct to consumer and now really digital,” said Roberts.
The consumer expectation in the insurance space, she said, is being able to get five quotes in five minutes.
Her firm recently started offering insurance, said Roberts, as part of their goal to create financial empowerment for everyone.
“But there's also so much opportunity to disrupt the space, to be fair,” she said.
However, her end goal is familiar to insurers: getting customers to focus less on claims and more on how insurance can bring peace of mind.
Kris Faafoi, the new CEO of the Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) discussed the regulatory scene, including the Contracts of Insurance Act, currently passing through parliament “as we speak.”
He anticipated big changes for the industry.
In terms of how to collaborate, lawyer Andrew Dentice, a partner with Hudson Gavin Martin, had a suggestion. He encouraged the insurance industry to learn from the collaboration he witnessed during the open banking reforms, between banks, regulators, big corporates and tech firms.
“That’s a big shift,” he said.
The Customer and Product Data Bill, likely to start coming into force in 2026, he said, could have a significant impact on how insurers interact with both customers and each other.
He said this and other regulatory moves are a shift towards customer focused legislation that ends the “ivory tower” approach by financial services and uses technology to provide more clarity to products and services.
Ben Lynch, CEO of Akahu, said insurtechs will need to be patient. Akahu is a provider of
open banking and open finance infrastructure.
Lynch said he found New Zealand’s banking community more conservative and slower moving than US or UK counterparts. He suspected the insurance ecosystem could be similar.
While bankers were on board with open banking, regulatory and technological changes and collaboration, they went at their own pace, he said.
Other speakers on the day included Tim von Dadelszen, head of digital innovation for
Partners Life, a health and life insurer. He suggested that the insurance industry could be coming to the end of the accepted idea of disclosure.
“Do you even need disclosure anymore?” he asked.
Von Dadelszen said new legislation around privacy and data, together with new technology, could fundamentally change how insurers and customers feel about data.
“Once you get this regulated, well understood and a normalized value exchange,” he said, “so I will give you this, if you give me that - and if that's done in a structured way, everybody gets much more comfortable with exactly why they're giving their data and exactly what value is being offered in return.”
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