10 Insurtechs That Tackle IT

Regulatory overhead + old technology = high prices + bad service. A German insurer shared this telling formula with us, and it’s a perfect summary of the challenges that insurers are facing. Among the 75 executives we interviewed for our book Reinventing Customer Engagement: The next level of digital transformation, many said that maintaining legacy systems consumes 90% of technology budgets. Typical digital transformation programs therefore give a lot of attention to simplifying IT environments. Outdated systems not only result in high costs but also make it difficult and costly to act quickly and effectively on new customer wishes. The systems of insurers are often older than the customers they serve. Meanwhile, digital life has become so much more intuitive (Apple), interactive (Mint), contextual (Amazon), beautiful (Spotify) and intelligent (Google). Insurers have to operate much closer to the market and foster the opportunities that new technologies offer with techniques such as the "lean methodology" to experiment with new ideas and processes, constantly tweaking these with fast feedback loops. So, in this blogpost, we included 10 insurtechs and innovative tech providers that help insurers with solving the legacy issue, taking IT off the critical path:

1. KASKO
2. Backbase
3. Vlocity
4. Keylane
5. Faktor Zehn
6. Roundcube
7. Tieto
8. OutShared
9. Guidewire
10. Ti&m

(The forthcoming DIA edition in Munich (Nov. 15 and 16) will, of course, feature the latest.) 1.  Kasko: Helping insurers to act like an insurtech startup London-based Kasko is the first digital insurance platform for on-demand insurance products to enable insurance companies and brokers to quickly bring products to market. Kasko allows digital marketplaces and booking platforms to offer their customers contextually relevant insurance products via plugin or API. The company relieves clients from the regulatory and technological burdens associated with integrating directly within insurance companies. Kasko provides insurance solutions within the spaces of car, property, freelance, travel and events. By offering an API-powered agile insurance product platform that sits in between digital customer touchpoints and their customers legacy IT, they take the internal IT off the critical path to product launch. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. 2.  Backbase: Omni-channel experiences, ready to go Backbase has created the world’s leading lean customer experience platform, Backbase CXP. It has been designed to help financial institutions organize, create and manage deeply relevant customer experiences across all channels, on any device, to delight your customers and deliver measurable business results. Backbase has a flexible and modular architecture that puts insurance providers back in control of their digital experiences and strategy, which puts them back in touch with their customers. By putting their own business and digital marketing teams in the driver's seat, insurers will be able to create the types of interactions that boost engagement, resulting in increased retention and a larger share of wallet and, most importantly, happy customers. Backbase is a ready-to-go insurance solution. It fully supports internet, tablet and mobile experiences, including omni-channel, by facilitating cross-channel customer journeys, plus seamless handover and orchestration between channels and devices. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. See also: 10 Insurtechs for Superb Engagement   3. Faktor Zehn: innovative agile insurance solutions Munich-based Faktor Zehn is well known as the product house for agile insurance solutions. The international IT consulting and software company, provides innovative consulting services in combination with concrete solutions based on the platform-independent programming language Java. Faktor Zehn focuses on product management, policy management and sales and service systems to help insurance companies to innovate and develop competitive advantages. All products are developed to support insurance companies to generate speed of innovation as well as competitive advantages. Therefore, all business transactions are executable through web services to ensure a high rate of fully automatic processing. The user interface is optimized to process complex issues while leaving intact all primary batch processes, such as follow-up debit and premium due date mutations. While using products of Faktor Zehn, business and IT development teams of an insurance company work hand in hand with product development to improve time to market, to make sure that the products meet the high standards and to launch products or product variants quickly and efficiently. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. 4.  Keylane: software with smart robotic applications for insurers Keylane is the showcase of insurance 3.0. The state-of-the-art Keylane technology platform supports core processes such as policy administration, sales and distribution and underwriting, and enables companies to excel in operational performance as well as in customer service. Keylane’s software solutions enable companies to engage effectively with their customers; providing operational agility (founded on best practice), in the insurance and pension markets. New technologies such as speech recognition, social analysis and predictive analytics are already integrated with the Keylane solutions to make the insurance customer experience as easy and friendly as possible. The integration of core solutions with smart robotic applications provides front-line workers within a matter of seconds with a more holistic view of their information landscape. Improving efficiency, effectiveness and lowering of costs. The user-friendly multi-channel portals integrated with flexible administration systems enable insurers to boost customer experience as well as excel in operational efficiency, achieving cost savings of more than 50% on the IT budget. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. 5.  Vlocity: Adding industry-specific process applications to Salesforce Developed in partnership with Salesforce, Vlocity extends the Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Communities Cloud and other clouds with very specific business process applications for, among others, the insurance and health insurance verticals. The Vlocity apps on Salesforce add value to the user through a much faster time to market, a lower total cost of ownership and the agility of a product that stays in sync with Salesforce all the way through. Those are huge benefits from a business perspective. ABD Insurance, a top 100 insurance broker in America, sells all different lines of insurance across multiple carriers and uses Salesforce, which ABD liked it but which couldn’t do all the things the broker wanted. Vlocity came in and deployed Vlocity Insurance in just 45 days. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here.
6.  Roundcube: Why a "fat" mid-office is healthy for insurers! To be truly agile as an insurer, you need an almost unattractive body: a slim back office, a flat layer that enables connectivity at the front end and a rich, "fat" mid office that is the engine that drives it all. It’s the mid-office where connections should be made. We cannot wish our legacy systems away, we cannot simply upgrade, we cannot continue to add channels that add cost without bringing in more business.  But what we can do is use the back office for its core and stable strength by extracting relevant data and let it run the more stable admin tasks. This system can run at a different heartbeat and cost than a mid- and front office, while still making use of your existing investment. The Roundcube Insurance Platform is an agile mid-office engine where data becomes relevant information, where you can build experiences with the customer through relevant offerings. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. 7.  Tieto: an ecosystem for business renewal Tieto, the largest IT services company in the Nordic region and creator of the world’s first internet bank, digital health records and e-invoice solutions, has already helped a large number of worldwide businesses in banking, insurance, retail, manufacturing, healthcare and public services with the digital leap in highly competitive markets. What’s more, Tieto actively builds an ecosystem of leading innovators and startups to complement its offering on data-driven areas. Tieto has several internal startups in the company focused on Tieto’s main growth areas: Customer Experience Management (CEM), Internal Internet solutions and Security Systems. This benefits customers by allowing them an increased ability to speed up digitalization. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. See also: What Incumbents Can Teach Insurtechs   8.  OutShared: a digital insurer in a box OutShared offers an in-house developed and built digital insurance platform in a SAAS solution to the market. OutShared's platform is an all-in-one insurance solution for policy management, quotations, claims origination and processing: from back-office database through middle-office processing to front-office web and app interfaces. Built on today's digital ethos, and offered through strategic BPO and SaaS operations, OutShared offers the smart integrated solution for insurance specialists, developed for both new market offerings and the renovation of established operations migrated to the platform. HEMA for instance, an established retail brand, converted its traditional business to OutShared’s platform. As a result, the operational cost ratio decreased by 50%, the loss ratio improved by 10 percentage points in one year. The portfolio was converted in two months, from zero to live in six months. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. 9.  Guidewire: Personalized and hassle-free customer journeys with among others a chatbot and Facebook messenger service The California-based company builds software products that help P&C insurers replace their legacy core systems and transform their business. Providing insurers with solutions for the main drivers for a successful customer journey; digitalization, personalization and a real omni-channel strategy. Guidewire products enable insurers to deliver excellent service for all stakeholder within the insurance lifecycle, increase market share and lower operating costs. The platform is based on three elements – core processing, data and analytics and digital engagement. These work together to strengthen the insurers’ ability to engage and empower their customers, agents and employees, allowing insurers to select, deploy and upgrade best-of-breed applications individually or as a pre-integrated suite, according to their requirements and priorities. More than 260 P&C insurers off all sizes and business lines around the world have selected Guidewire. In Europe alone, Guidewire has more than 45 customers across 11 countries. Read more, click here. Check demo, click here. 10.  Ti&m: the benchmark for a personalized digitalization strategy Ti&m is a Swiss market leader for digitalization and security products. The ti&m channel suite is the simple, fast, trusted and efficient way to digitalize customer relationships. With flexible business modules, ti&m creates a personalized digitalization strategy. The ti&m security suite provides the necessary security for all channels and makes the digitalization journey safer and faster. Together they set the benchmark for business digitalization. The ti&m approach is cost efficient with an extremely low cost of entry and compatible with most of the current security providers Read more, click here. Check demo, click here.