The term “digital platform” is just as ambiguous within insurance as the term “digital strategy.” A wide range of solutions all market themselves as digital platforms, from development platforms and low-code/no-code toolsets to pre-built portals and even hubs and intermediaries.
In practice, formulating a digital strategy means defining the priorities and objectives for investing in specific capabilities. Insurers thinking about digital platforms should make sure they clearly understand their digital strategy and its objectives.
Recently, Novarica created a map of the insurance digital platform space to help insurers understand this vendor marketplace. To understand a potential digital solution, insurers need to understand which quadrant it comes from, its capabilities, and what problems it is designed to solve. These quadrants include:
Digital Marketing
Solutions in the digital marketing quadrant focus on deploying websites, managing marketing programs, and supporting customer engagement. They do not typically include transactional or process orchestration elements to integrate back to insurer core systems. Solution types that originate in this quadrant include development platforms, content management systems (CMS), digital experience platforms (DXP), and digital marketing platforms (DMP).
Traditional E-Business
“Agent portal” used to be a stand-alone solution category during the first wave of insurance digitalization in the early 2000s. Today, these solutions are designed primarily to give external users access to internal transactional systems through a digital layer. Nearly all major property/casualty core systems vendors and many life/annuity/benefits core suites offer pre-built portal solutions. Most vendors position them as front-ends to any core system.
Digital Operations
These systems focus on configurable business processes, orchestration, business rules, and integration to core systems. They generally have flexible and configurable UX layers, but their real value lies in their ability to handle complex processes. Solution types that originate in this quadrant include business process management (BPM) and low-code/no-code toolsets.
Ecosystem
This quadrant is a mix of solutions, categorized by their origins and focus areas. For instance, the complex pathways by which information flows between insurers, agents, and policyholders have led to the proliferation of platforms devoted to distribution connectivity. APIs can enable partner integration or third-party platforms that serve as hubs or intermediaries, generally between insurers and distributors.
It’s more important for insurers to understand what a solution really does than what it calls itself. Insurers that understand which digital capabilities are required to meet their objectives are more prepared to understand the advantages and disadvantages within the field of solutions marketed as digital platforms.
For more on this topic, see Novarica’s recent report, Digital Platforms in Insurance: Overview and Key Issues.
This blog entry has been reposted with permission
