EVENTS: ITC ASIA Heavy weather? The insurtech industry is prepared for change
Risks and rewards The ITC Asia Virtual Summit was a precursor to the region’s largest live insurtech event to be held later in 2022. Here are some of the key themes to emerge from it… The Asian insurance industry is teeming with digital life. From blockchain-based claims processing to satellite verification software, the global east has set a lucrative precedent for the rest of the world to follow its experimental lead. More than $20billion was invested into insurtech in the Asia Pacific in the five years before the pandemic hit, according to a report from Standard Chartered Bank, which observed that global insurers are ‘engaged in a race to attract market share by embracing digital solutions to drive efficient distribution, and create an excellent customer experience’. It predicted that market expansion in Asia Pacific will play a major role in driving the global industry’s growth over the next decade, not least because China alone is the second biggest insurance market in the world. Other notable hotspots in this region include the Indian life insurance market, which is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 10.1 per cent by 2027, attributed to the growing adoption of technology. ffnews.com
The 2022 InsureTech Connect Asia Virtual Summit saw industry leaders from sectors including property and casualty (P&C), commercial, life and health (L&H) and reinsurance come together to discuss what makes this region particularly ripe for opportunity. These were some of the key takeaways.
COVID is the biggest catalyst for change, particularly in L&H insurance Tech topics at the Summit ranged from back-office automation to online customer preferences. But you couldn’t get away from the impact that the events of 2020 had on the industry. “What short-circuited sales cycles for the life insurance industry was COVID, it wasn’t any particular technology,” said Kalai Natarajan, general manager of digital solutions and marketing at Dai-ichi Life Asia Pacific. In the panel discussion ‘How Are Insurtechs And Digital Insurers Changing The Way Insurance Is Done?’, Natarajan described the many ways in which COVID changed working practices and products, including remote selling and delivery of enhanced underwriting solutions, bitesize or usage-based insurance, telemedicine and home-based services. During the first 12 months of the pandemic, industry growth stalled worldwide, with insurance companies appearing to experience a slowdown in gross written premiums (GWP), especially
in the life sector, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). But bounceback has been strong, with Swiss Re now predicting above-trend GWP growth of 3.3 per cent in 2022, and the industry expected to break through the $7trillion total premium ceiling by mid-year. Natarajan stressed that internal relationships within insurance companies need to change if new technologies are to work effectively to deliver this growth. “There needs to be a commitment on every level of the organisation, from the ground up,” she said. “That is becoming easier because the people at the working level are looking around and seeing the changes that are happening.” A Swiss Re COVID-19 consumer survey in Asia Pacific in 2021, found that almost two-thirds of customers were still concerned about their health. Nearly half felt that they needed more medical insurance and a third believed they were under-insured for potential income loss resulting from disease, long-term disability or death of a main household breadwinner.
A shift in focus towards younger customers is driving change Standard Chartered Bank’s report also found that insurers in Asia Pacific are adapting to a much younger customer base for L&H insurance, where they are focussing more on preventative healthcare and offering rewards, using gamification and wellness advice to personalise products. Issue 7 | TheInsurtechMagazine
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