How Collaboration Can Make a Sustainable Impact In Insurance
Just a few weeks ago, the insurance industry was running the business as usual. Now, the whole picture has changed — business priorities are being shifted, meetings and events are re-organised in digital-first settings, and the focus of discussions are tuned around the virus that is sweeping the world, COVID-19.
While the crisis is posing an overwhelming impact on the insurance industry as on any others, it is also creating opportunities that the industry hasn’t seen before. Two of the most noticeable movements are the increase of tech initiatives towards a lean way of digitisation and accelerated collaborations to enable this jointly.
Collaborative Initiatives At A Glance
Many great initiatives are taking place every day to make positive and sustainable impacts on people’s lives and businesses. To give an overview, we’ve curated some of them that are coming from various angles: 1) insurtech-led initiatives, 2) incumbent-led initiatives, 3) tech organisation-led initiatives and 4) government-led initiatives.
Insurtech-led initiatives
The COVID-19 situation has led the existing innovators to cater their propositions to the needs related to the crisis and in some cases, new insurtechs to emerge.
- In Plug & Play’s recent blog, it highlights seven Chinese insurtech start-ups that stood out in response to the situation. To name a few: Halola Tech has developed an AI-driven online platform with which people can evaluate the risk of infection and physical and psychological health during the virus outbreak. Threatbook provides free IT security services for the data-sensitive organizations as insurers that are concerned about data safety during the quarantine or work-home period.
- Another great example is an Indian start-up BlinkIN, which collaborated with a German air handling system provider and helped install air ventilation systems in the hospitals in Wuhan by using remote visual-assistance technology.
- Sprout.ai is one of the insurtechs whose proposition matches with the insurers’ current challenges. With its AI-driven claim automation platform, this UK-based start-up simplifies claim processing which could help deal with the raft of claims related to the crisis.
Incumbent-led initiatives
Some of the insurers and bancassurers are leading great initiatives by partnering with insurtechs and tackling the issues together.
- BBVA’s Ninja Program: BBVA launched an internal program in April to encourage its employees to take part in designing technological solutions that could solve the issues for their community.
- Allianz with Medi24: with Medi24, a Switzerland based telehealth subsidiary of Allianz Partners, Allianz is providing medical consultations and instructions for self-care as well as non-clinical services such as education and training related to coronavirus.
- AXA’s Research Fund: AXA is working on several initiatives with over €7.4 million funding budget to support developing the solutions for infectious diseases as COVID-19. Open COVID-19 Initiative is part of this, which is an open-source platform for developing low-cost solutions. The fund also is supporting JEDI (Joint European Disruptive Initiative) COVID-19 Challenge — a joint initiative by European tech leaders across 23 countries focusing on collaboration among scientists on researching therapeutic treatments.
- Zurich’s Innovation Championship (ZIC) & Free Child Insurance: with ZIC, a global start-up innovation competition, Zurich is supporting new business ideas that could help transform the insurance industry, including the solutions to fight against COVID-19. Also, Zurich Germany has developed an accident insurance for children in collaboration with an insurtech and is providing it for free until July 31st, 2020.
Tech organisation-led initiatives
- TNW’s #HackTheCrisis: TNW has organized a virtual hackathon at the beginning of April together with a number of Dutch start-ups and tech providers to put through the innovations to development that could help combat the pandemic.
- 27pilots’ Start-ups Against Corona: a Munich-based venture client service company, 27pilots, has launched an initiative and created a website where enterprises can post their problems and start-ups can share workable solutions in response to that.
- Techleap’s COVID-19 Access Program: this Dutch government-funded tech ecosystem organisation has set up an accelerator program to support the start-ups in the medical and health care field to fight against the crisis caused by the COVID-19 virus.
- Hello Tomorrow’s Deep Tech Startups Fighting COVID-19: this Paris-based think tank is supporting ‘deep tech’ start-ups that are moving fast to develop viable solutions, from low-cost ventilators to carbon negative sanitisers.
- PwC’s Insurtechs vs. Coronavirus: PwC Germany is gathering a list of insurtech start-ups—DIG being one of them—that offer effective solutions across various areas, from digital customer support to contract and claim processing.
- Gesund Zusammen (Healthy Together): Healthy Together is an initiative by a group of German tech start-ups. This group is developing a centralised platform called ‘PPEP-PT (Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing)’ that connects various national contact tracing apps.
- Apple & Google’s Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing: the two tech giants have initiated an unprecedented partnership to develop a solution for tracking the spread of the virus based on the Bluetooth chip in the users’ phone.
Government-led initiatives
Although not all are focused on the insurance sector in specific, many governments are looking into working together with tech-driven innovators to prevent, detect and treat the virus. One of the examples is Techleap which is introduced above, and some others in Europe are:
- European Commission’s EIC Accelerator and #EUvsVirus: with its innovation program EIC Accelerator and a budget of €164 million, the European Commission supports small businesses with the right technologies that could help tackle the issue. EpiShuttle, developing gas disinfection technology, is one of the projects. #EUvsVirus is a pan-European hackathon happening in late April to develop innovation-driven solutions for coronavirus, in collaboration with the EU member states.
- Comunidad de Madrid’s #VenceAlVirus: the regional government of Madrid commenced an online hackathon throughout March-April under the name ‘Vence Al Virus (beat the virus)’ to address the fundamental challenges related to health, communities, employment and businesses.
- Robert Koch Institute’s Corona Datenspende (Corona Data Donation): In April, the German governmental research organisation, RKI, has collaborated with a tech start-up Thryve and launched an app with an aim to better measure and prevent the spread of the virus.
- NHSx’s Dubbed Techforce19: with the funding budget of £500K, UK’s National Health Service has launched in April an innovation competition for startups with digital solutions to help people in various health sectors, such as mental health and social care.
Sustainable Impact Can Be Made Through Collaboration
So, what does it mean to the insurance industry? The main takeaways are clear:
- Each party has different roles and strengths that can contribute to overcoming the crisis. Start-ups can launch MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) in a quick timeframe and improve solutions flexibly through a trial-and-error approach. Incumbents understand the needs of their customers best and can make direct impacts on people’s lives by providing the most relevant services to them. When these forces are applied jointly, it can create a sustainable impact towards a healthy future.
- As many industry leaders and experts address, this is the time to embark a lean way of digitisation through flexible, fast and easily executable tech solutions. It is not only important to deal with the immediate challenges but also to think ahead of the close future. The crisis is believed to have a lasting impact beyond the early quarters of 2020 — adopting a lean approach to digital transformation enables insurers and bancassurers to secure a sustainable way to sail through this storm.
- Collaboration is the way up and out of this crisis: a pandemic isn’t something that can be overcome by one’s sole endeavour. Insurers, Insurtechs and governments have to work hand in hand. For insurtechs, it is our responsibility to help insurers be equipped with the most optimal tools to effectively manage the situation. For insurers, the key to coming out stronger from the crisis is to adapt flexibly and swiftly towards digitisation by collaborating with agile digital enablers.
Looking for help on accelerating digital transformation? Get in touch here.
