NEW BUSINESS MODELS: MODULAR INSURANCE Platform provider, Tigerlab, believes the experience of the past year-and-a-half will stimulate demand for ‘bite-sized’ cover, better suited to our re-engineered lifestyles. Chief Operating Officer, Holm Schimanski, sets out what he thinks insurers need in their kit to provide it profitably A perfect storm of technological advances, elevated customer expectations, cultural behaviour change – and a pandemic – have accelerated the rate of disruption in the insurance sector. To survive and thrive in this new landscape, where opportunity and risk vanish just as quickly as they appear, insurers are reviewing operating models and approaches to customer experience. Holm Schimanski, chief operating officer of Tigerlab,
an omnichannel, Cloud-based provider of the i2go platform-as-a-service, working mainly with small-to medium-sized insurers, believes most people have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the level of service they received over the past 12-to-18 months, and are re-evaluating the merit of insurance as we know it. He believes it heralds a decisive shift towards more modular cover, built around specific users, reflecting individual circumstances; products designed for modern living that move the industry away from the archetypal insurance policy, most of which people never read and half of which aren’t relevant to their needs anyway. Consumers will increasingly dictate the terms on which those products are offered. Take motor insurance. Due to several lockdowns, social distancing measures and a rapid shift to remote working, vehicles have been more off the road than on, of late. But, while motor insurance customers might be spending less time at the wheel, they have most definitely been in the driving seat when it comes to forcing changes to suit their modified needs. “Motor insurance is the prime example,” says Schimanski. “Customers
are saying ‘why do I pay the same price for insurance when I have nowhere to go and I can’t use my car?’. “We’ve seen new insurance models benefit from the situation – they can adapt the pricing, and adapt the product to customers’ current situations. Customers have been forced to find alternative ways of purchasing, renewing or changing their insurances, and we see this trend in usage-based insurance in particular,” he adds. Tigerlab’s developer sandbox is busy with responses to this new normal – from wedding cancellation cover in the light of unpredictable public protection measures, to electric scooter insurance as towns and cities embrace car-less commuting, and usage-based insurance for those still reliant on them. They’re all examples of how dramatic changes in the way society is organised threaten to make most traditional insurance irrelevant. Tigerlab, which has grown into a global company from its innovation hub in Kuala Lumpa and now has a Swiss HQ, advocates ‘bite-sized’ insurance products that can be stacked to provide a range of cover, bespoke to the person buying it.
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Issue 6 | TheInsurtechMagazine
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