What Will Operations Look Like in 2028?

In a 2011 article in Insurance and Technology, Kathy Burger enumerated several big technological changes in the insurance industry since 2001, including the rise of big data, the ubiquitous nature of cell phones and social media and an increased emphasis on data security and privacy. Seven years later, these once-big innovations are par for the course. P&C insurers and insurtech companies are now positioned to use these tools — which scarcely existed in 2001 and which were only beginning to be broadly embraced in 2011 — as the foundation for the next wave of major changes in the insurance industry. Now, let’s look at some of the biggest rising insurtech trends today to get an idea of where they’re likely to take us 10 years from now. Auto Insurance In July 2015, Jayleen R. Heft published an article at PropertyCasualty360 with the provocative title, “Will the auto insurance industry be obsolete in 20 years?” Heft cited the work of Deutsche Bank research analyst Joshua Shanker, who argued that by 2030 self-driving cars and ride-sharing services would occupy so much of the automotive market that setting rates based on driving data would no longer be necessary. Instead, the companies behind these vehicles and services would simply “insure their cars like any other product,” Heft said. While self-driving cars and ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft are already shaking up the auto industry, predicting the demise of auto insurance by 2030 — or by 2028, even — may be premature. Pay-per-mile auto insurance is gaining popularity. Spearheaded by companies like Metromile and Esurance, the pay-per-mile model charges a base rate, plus a specified rate for each mile driven. “Each mile usually costs a few cents,” Craig Casazza explains in an article for ValuePenguin. “So if you drive 200 miles per month at a rate of five cents per mile, you would be charged $10.” In addition, Metromile only charges drivers for the first 250 miles driven in any given day in most states. Tracking Mileage With Telemetrics Both Metromile and Esurance use telemetrics to track miles driven to calculate each month’s rate. Metromile calls its program the “Metromile Pulse,” and it uses the car’s OBD-II port to track mileage. Other insurance companies have experimented with telemetrics for a number of years but haven’t connected rates directly to miles driven. Instead, they use the vehicle’s data to adjust rates in a more complex, less transparent manner, Casazza says. See also: Future of P&C Tech Comes Into Focus   The pay-per-mile model is increasingly popular with younger drivers, who often have the option to abandon their cars entirely for the convenience of Uber or public transportation, but who are happy to keep the freedom of their own vehicle when they feel they can more directly control its costs. For these drivers, who include a growing number of those currently under age 40, auto insurance may survive into the 2030s — although it may operate in a very different way. Shanker’s prediction that auto insurance will fade into product liability insurance over the next decade, however, may be prescient. In an October 2017 article in Business Insider, Danielle Muoio explored Tesla’s partnership with Liberty Mutual to sell insurance as part of the purchase price of the company’s vehicles. The plan, called InsureMyTesla, factors in the car’s autopilot feature while setting rates and comes up with a lower cost than other insurance plans as a result, Muoio reports. Insuring Shared Rides Similarly, while ride-sharing company Uber currently requires drivers to carry their own auto insurance coverage while also providing supplementary insurance, the company may switch to providing all insurance coverage on its cars as it continues to move into the self-driving vehicle market. Given Uber’s bumpy ride in producing self-driving vehicles, however, the company’s total abandonment of conventional auto insurance expectations for human drivers may be more than 10 years out, Tech Radar’s Leif Johnson and Michelle Fitzsimmons said in May 2018. Adding Value and Processing Claims “Digital technology destroys value,” warned a March 2017 article by Tanguy Catlin, Johannes-Tobias Lorenz, Christopher Morrison, and Holger Wilms at McKinsey & Co. According to the authors, “although digital technology propels some companies to become clear market winners, for many more its impact depletes corporate earnings and the overall value of an industry. Consumers, not companies, are often the ultimate winners.” To stay relevant, the authors said, insurance companies must “meet customers’ expectations, which have been transformed by digital technology.” In 2018, insurance companies seeking to stay ahead of the curve often accomplish this task by breaking down their own silos and presenting a quick, clean digital interface that makes it easy for customers to interact with the company and for staff to understand customers’ needs and provide clear, consistent answers. Bridging Human and Automated Workflows By 2028, companies are likely to have struck a balance between automation and human intervention — a balance that many insurers are currently struggling to find, Rick Huckstep writes in an article in The Digital Insurer. Automation offers both the opportunity to improve claims response and the challenge of providing the “human touch” that customers also demand, as Roger Peverelli and Reggy De Feniks put it in a December 2017 piece for Insurance Thought Leadership. The goal will be to use automation in a way that doesn’t feel automated. As AI technology continues to develop, this goal may be fully realized within 10 years. The automation of many of the current day-to-day tasks faced by insurance agents will, in turn, change agents’ jobs. Some commentators are already predicting that today’s field agents will be obsolete by 2023, replaced by “bionic agents” who have fully integrated digital tools, including AI and machine learning, into their work. How Automation Influences Customer Expectations Customers are already demanding the knowledge and flexibility a bionic agent exemplifies. As Jason Walker writes at PropertyCasualty360, “Consumers today want the ability to conduct insurance business anytime, anywhere for simple transactions, while at the same time be able to have a relationship with a professional to discuss complex policy questions or walk them through the claims process.” As this option becomes ever more normalized for customers, the demand for the same experience in insurance will rise. as well. The result? By 2028, “digital natives” won’t only be insurance customers — they’ll also be insurance agents who leverage technology not only to serve customers but to demonstrate real value in the insurance process. See also: Key Strategic Initiatives in P&C   Automation and Claims Processing Field agents aren’t the only insurance industry professionals who will see their work change dramatically by 2028. The ways insurance companies process claims will change, as well, driven in large part by customer expectations. For instance, Ben Rossi writes at Information Age that about a fifth of young adult customers (ages 18–24) expect insurance companies to use drone technology to survey property damage and gather information for claims. This idea “would have been unthinkable as recently as a couple of years ago,” Rossi says. Ten years from now, sending a drone to a damaged building or factory site may be as commonplace as sending a human adjuster has been for the past 10 years. For many of us, 2008 feels like it was yesterday. In 2028, our memories of 2018 will feel the same — yet the insurance industry is poised to be eons ahead of where it currently stands, and insurtech will lead the way.