It goes without saying that innovation is the epicenter of the insurance industry. Insurance providers are starving for innovation, and technology providers are competing to deliver. However, there is a fundamental problem with how the industry views and understands what innovation means. Innovation, in general terms, is defined as a new method, idea, or product; however, innovation in the insurance industry has been reduced to a label.
Over the past decade, there has been a surge of buzz-innovation in the industry like artificial intelligence, blockchain, internet of things, and so on. Some of the buzz is just a remarketing of past concepts, while others truly are new, innovative ideas. Technology providers were quick to slap an “innovation-buzzword” sticker on their software to give the impression that they were innovative. The reality though is that it was just a label.
Innovation is extremely important to advance any technology however, it must be purposeful.
This is the litmus test that many insurers fail to administer – asking the basic question of “what problem does this solve.” Believe it or not, there are many insurers today that still have inefficient, manual underwriting processes; cannot launch new products for emerging markets because their core systems are antiquated; or even make simple product changes without a massive multi-month project. Hate to break it to you, but AI, blockchain, [pick your buzz] won’t help solve these problems.
Unfortunately, there are many technology and solution providers that use these labels, and many insurance companies have invested in these concepts. As a matter of fact, some insurance companies have departments dedicated to them.
We believe that it is great to research these new concepts, but there are so many more important problems to solve.
The ClarionDoor Experience
At ClarionDoor, we believe that innovation starts with identifying and understanding real industry problems and developing advanced technology to solve them. When we started ClarionDoor, we recognized that the industry had become distracted with theoretical technologies that really didn’t address the challenges facing insurers.
We develop software that actually solves the challenges of product distribution. No labels – just great technology.
But we also recognized that great technology alone isn’t enough to be innovative. It takes great people that understand insurance, and great processes that actually get clients live. It is that combination of product, process, and people that forms the ClarionDoor experience which has been effective for companies to go live in weeks, and liberating them to focus on innovation not implementation.