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Our Technology Vision for Insurance 2020 shows that insurers should prepare for a “tech-clash” where business and technology models collide with changing consumer values and aspirations.

At a time when digital technology is everywhere, insurance enterprises need a new roadmap to drive success. And that’s where our Accenture Technology Vision for Insurance 2020 comes in. This year our Tech Vision theme is “We, the Post-Digital People: Can your enterprise survive the tech-clash?”  

In a post-digital world—one where digital is not new to people and no longer a differentiating advantage for organizations—technology is deeply embedded in how we work and live. Many of Europe’s leading insurance organizations have already embarked on bold, wide-ranging digital transformation programs to reshape how they interact with people and other businesses.  

But as we move into a world where digital is everywhere—enterprises need to once again re-imagine their business and technology models. Despite spending decades talking about the promise of technology, the reality is that businesses have much more work to do to deliver on this promise. People’s values are changing, along with their expectations, which means insurers are changing, too. 

The current COVID-19 related confinement and the speed at which individuals and companies have adapted to homeworking, and the predominately digital interactions this entails, illustrate how far businesses can go to deliver on this promise and how much more work there is to do to leverage the full power of digital.  

81% of European Insurance executives acknowledge that technology has become an inextricable part of the human experience.

On one hand, people are seemingly rejecting technology. “Tech-lash,” or backlash against technology, is appearing in several forms. This manifests through movements like digital detoxing, where people are seeking to balance the role technology plays in their lives, as well as growing through regulation around the relationships between tech, data and people.  

On the other hand, by almost all metrics, people are increasing their use of and intimacy with technology. People are ever-connected on every type of device, globally spending an average of 6.4 hours online daily. We see this paradox as a tech-clash—a collision between business and technology models, which are not driving adequate business value nor aligning to people’s values. 

The tech-clash arrives at a time that insurance carriers are under growing pressure to accelerate their digital transformation. The Accenture Disruptability Index 2.0 ranks insurance in 2018 as the fourth most disrupted sector, the most susceptible to future disruption, and one of the least innovative sectors. 

Insurance has lagged many other sectors in adopting digital technologies to transform its core, embrace customer-focused experience design, and weave its offering into people’s daily lives and into organizations’ daily operations. But with compressed margins, slowing growth, new competition and the erosion of traditional industry strengths, change is imperative for the incumbents.  

Some are looking at a “living business” model to reignite growth and enhance profitability. This approach sees insurers aim to provide products, services and experiences that “wrap around” individual customers, constantly learning more about their needs, intents and preferences. Making this transition will not be possible without winning customers’, employees’ and intermediaries’ confidence that insurers are using digital technology in a way that benefits them.   

Now, to get consumers and commercial customers to embrace new products and services, insurers must adapt their approach to bring a human focus and better align with people’s expectations – creating a virtuous circle of trust to develop stronger, more trusting relationships with stakeholders. This re-imagination of insurance – and of leadership – offers tremendous opportunities for those who take the lead.  

We are seeing this playing out across five main insurance technology trends in this year’s Technology Vision for Insurance:  

• The I in Experience: Helping people choose their own adventure. 
• AI and Me: Reimagine the business through human and AI collaboration. 
• The Dilemma of Smart Things: Overcome the “beta burden”.  
• Robots in the Wild: Growing the enterprise’s reach – and responsibility. 
• Innovation DNA: Create an engine for continuous innovation. 

I’ll explore these insurance tech trends in more detail in my next post.

To learn more about this year’s insurance technology trends, read Accenture Technology Vision for Insurance 2020.