SMA Strategy Meets Action (SMA), an insurance industry analyst firm, announced the availability of a new report that explores major technology trends and new types of opportunities for insurers that will evolve over the next decade. "Insight on the Future of Insurance: Looking at Technology through the Long Lens," is part of the SMA Strategic Insights research series.
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Information and communication technologies (ICT) are advancing at an astounding pace and combining to create a powerful force for transformation. Coupled with scientific developments in areas such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, genomics, and alternative energy, the impact promises to drive staggering change in the world of insurance. As ICT and scientific advances become more sophisticated and pervasive, new risks will arise and new opportunities for products, channels, and business models will unfold.
“Insight” provides a view, using a 10-year time horizon, of how advances in ICT will alter the landscape, and describes key implications for the global insurance industry. Using five major ICT trends, the report describes four business shifts and identifies five new areas of opportunities for insurers. For example, massive amounts of information, including intelligence embedded in more and more things, will spur a shift in business strategic focus beyond automation to insight that will make it possible to instantly negotiate and offer variable product provisions that contain dynamic pricing options.
New opportunities for insurers will result from the introduction of new types of risk and new ways to package, deliver, sell, and service insurance, as well as new ways to price and manage risk. Innovative insurers will employ new business models to gain a competitive edge.
“Insurers that are proactively thinking about the implications of these changes and developing scenarios for the future world of insurance will be better positioned to capitalize on new opportunities,” says Mark Breading, SMA partner and author of the report. “Although it is not possible to predict exactly what the world will be like in 2020, it is possible to create a nimble organization with fully coordinated people, process, data, and technology—an organization that is able to adapt and thrive in the future.”