As a key component of its ongoing digital and data transformation strategy,
Cincinnati Insurance, the commercial and personal lines P&C subsidiary of Cincinnati Financial Corporation (CinFin), gained the JobsOhio Research & Development Center Grant by promising to grow its insurtech R&D operations in several ways.
Key provisions include augmenting Cincinnati Insurance’s internal innovation team, the Strategic Innovation Group, by adding 10 new members to its founding team of three; expanding utilization of its headquarters-based innovation space, called The Studio; and increasing the insurer’s activities at the University of Cincinnati (UC)
Introducing methodologies and toolsets enterprise-wide
Despite the recent headline, the story really begins two years ago when Cincinnati Insurance moved from informal, siloed innovation projects to creating a unified enterprise initiative. “Launching a formal innovation effort enabled us to begin introducing methodologies and tool sets throughout our entire environment,” says Wendi Bukowitz, vice president and director of strategic innovation at Cincinnati Insurance.
As part of its formal efforts Cincinnati Insurance partnered with the University of Cincinnati for space at the 1819 Innovation Hub. There the insurer started two programs, one for academic research and the other for internal innovation, which builds skills and experiences across the Cincinnati Insurance workforce.
The academic agreement primarily focused on analytics modeling. “Some of the research has the potential to lead to intellectual property, which makes it a valuable R&D component of our innovation strategy,” Bukowitz says.
“The internal innovation program at 1819 is a 12-week immersion we designed for our employees,” says Bukowitz. “Participants use customer-centric lean start-up principles to focus on a business opportunity and test solutions in the market before presenting recommendations back to the sponsoring business unit. Sometimes an opportunity goes through several program cycles before it transitions back to the business unit.”
Grant funding boosts multi-pronged strategy
With the JobsOhio grant Cincinnati Insurance has started adding to its Strategic Innovation Group. Over time this will include hiring individuals to lead five core innovation areas: everyday innovation, breakthrough innovation, external innovation, analytics and modeling, and awareness and engagement.
Also new is an on-site version of the 1819 program operated out of the Studio. It enables employees to tackle bite-sized innovation opportunities for four to eight hours a week. An early example is a joint effort with a group of independent agents to identify life events that could trigger P&C customers to consider life insurance. The project will also determine successful ways to approach those customers.
“Our new head of everyday innovation, one of the grant-funded positions, is leading the Studio program as well as managing and growing our efforts at 1819,” says Bukowitz.
Among the initiatives planned for 2021 is hiring a head of external innovation, who will focus on leveraging the industry’s startup ecosystem. “Like many established companies, we’re frequently approached by insurtech startups,” Bukowitz says. “It’s vitally important for us to be connected to that ecosystem and explore relationships that make sense.”
Another effort will encourage agent innovation. “We recently implemented a peer learning circles program, where agents experiment with new technologies with the support of their peers,” says Bukowitz. “It’s early days, but we look forward to building out a variety of agent-facing initiatives.”
Cincinnati Insurance also expects to broaden its academic presence at UC, which doubles as a workforce development and recruiting hub.
To measure the results achieved by its Strategic Innovation Group, Cincinnati Insurance has set “very ambitious” financial targets over the next decade, says Bukowitz. Critical to achieving its hard financial goals are soft goals related to encouraging an innovation culture and embedding the necessary skills.
“We’re working to achieve a flywheel effect by broadly distributing expertise,” Bukowitz says. “We look forward to gaining momentum toward achieving continuous innovation that happens naturally, every single day.”
