Recent announcements by two insurance technology accelerators drives home the point that the digital transformation in insurance is not limited to one country or contained within geographic boundaries. Increasingly, compelling ideas spread from one geography to others as digital initiatives are launched in one part of the world, perfected, and then adopted by other insurers in different countries.
A review of the list of startups included in the Global Insurance Accelerator and Hartford InsurTech Hub winter programs shows that almost half of the companies are headquartered outside the United States. (Details are here:
The global transfer of insurance technology has been covered by Celent for some time now. Here are a few examples from as “far back” as 2010:
- Peer to peer insurance: Friendsurance, launched in Germany 2010. Profiled in the Celent report “
Friendsurance: Challenging the Business Model of a Social Insurance Startup — A Case Study .”
- Pay as you use insurance: One Day Auto Insurance Tokio Marine, launched in Japan in 2012. Profiled in the Celent report “
Evolution of a Digital Customer Engagement Platform .”
- Third party data source use in claims: Social media and police crime reports used to proactively notify insureds of possible loss, U.K., 2012. Profiled in the Celent report “
Visualising the London Riots at AXA UK .”
Leading insurance innovators continuously scan activities which seek out high-value business models. Sometimes called listening posts, these groups look within the home country and around the world for new approaches to insurance which create value for consumers.
Whatever your approach is to staying abreast of the latest developments, make sure that geographic diversification is a planned tactic. While regulation is geo-specific, preventing some solutions from transferring “as is,” there is no need to reinvent the wheel if it has been perfected somewhere else in the world.
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