Insurance Portal

We are delighted once again to see the spirit of innovation on display in the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards. This year, through the power of Generative AI, we also uncovered six key trends shaping the future of the insurance industry.

Since their inception in 2016, the Awards program has served as a catalyst for innovation in the insurance sector. The winners are innovative insurers and insurtechs that have pushed boundaries, fostered collaboration, and created meaningful impact on the way their customers live and work.

Innovation trends in 2023

Every year, we analyze submission data from hundreds of award entries to better understand the innovation trends in the industry. This year, submissions were securely fed into our Generative AI model, which extracted key themes and trends from the entries.

Hours of work was done in minutes. We then shared these six innovation trends with the winners on the night of the awards ceremony. Here’s what we found.

1. Digital customer experience
   Insurers have an unprecedented opportunity to build trust with customers by proactively improving the engagement, and delivering a seamless, personalized experience in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. This trend relates to the increasing adoption of technology, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to enhance the overall customer experience across various aspects of insurance.
2. Health and well-being convergence
   This trend is driven by the increasing consumer demand for holistic and personalized care, as well as the recognition that promoting healthy lifestyles can reduce claims costs and improve customer retention.
3. Advanced analytics and personalization
   The use of advanced analytics and personalization allows insurers to enhance customer engagement, streamline processes, and drive revenue growth. This trend is growing as insurers leverage customer behavior and preference data to deliver solutions that meet their needs.
4. Sustainability
   The insurance industry increasingly seeks to adapt to the growing needs and evolving demands of consumers and regulators for environmentally responsible products and services. Carriers that embrace sustainability are positioned as industry leaders supporting a sustainable future.
5. Inclusive insurance
   The driver behind this trend is the growing awareness that disadvantaged segments, including low-income households, migrants, or small businesses, often lack access to affordable insurance that meets their needs. Expanding into underserved markets, carriers help bridge the protection gap and contribute to financial well-being and stability.
6. Ecosystem collaboration
   This trend is accelerated by the rapidly changing landscape of the insurance industry, as well as the need for insurers to be more agile, customer-centric, and efficient in their operations. We are seeing a rise in strategic partnerships, cross-industry collaborations, and the creation of new ecosystems that leverage emerging technologies and data-driven insights to deliver better outcomes.

Thank you to everyone who submitted entries to the 2023 Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards. You are all trend setters and pioneers on the New Performance Frontier for insurance.

The tech-powered operating model research shows that a broad enterprise technology strategy is crucial for business success. Part of that success comes from a leader’s ability to scale technology to drive exceptional customer experiences and new value propositions. In support of such an endeavor, insurers, driven by speed to market with new and differentiated products, are modernizing their core insurance systems and moving them to the cloud. This enables them to leverage advances in customer experience technologies like self-servicing and personalization through generative AI among other technologies. They look to these advancements to drive speed and scale required to remain competitive and grow profitably. In fact, a Gartner survey of insurance CIOs ranked customer experience and new product /service development in the top five objectives for their digital investments. The insurers we work with expressed similar views.

Improved speed to market on new products

When a Tier 1 annuity carrier was looking to provide new products on an accelerated timeline, they started by modernizing their core policy administration system. Using the platform’s configurable product templates enabled them to build a product chassis as a basis from which to quickly create multiple product variations by turning on or off features. This capability also allows them to provide white label products for their distribution partners such as using a bespoke index instead of a public index for one of their annuity products. With this high level of flexibility, the carrier is positioned to achieve its goal of bringing new and differentiated products to market quickly. At the same time, they’re offering an even better experience for their distribution partners.

Increased operating efficiency to better serve customers and employees

Similarly, a Tier 2 life insurance carrier modernized its new business and underwriting function with a focus on process efficiency to drive product development and improve customer and employee experience. They used the Accenture Life Insurance & Annuity Platform (ALIP) to introduce and later update an indexed universal life product followed by placing their high-volume term product onto the platform as a proving ground for future product launches, including a new indexed whole life product. Leveraging this technology helped them rethink their processes, making them more efficient and freeing up capacity for product teams to focus on the product roadmap and manufacturing products that meet their customers’ needs.

These future-ready carriers look to technology to provide greater flexibility to respond to—and anticipate—customer and stakeholder needs across their enterprises and distribution channels. Let’s talk about how you can elevate the customer experience with greater operating flexibility.