A new report from PwC has found that the most-important driver for insurers embracing new technology has been to lower expense ratios.
The survey, Underwriting Transformation Survey: Invest in Change – Drivers, Opportunities, and Risk in the London Market, found that only 3% of respondents saying that this reason was of no importance. Conversely, 72% of respondents labelled it as being very important, while 25% said it was merely important. Second-most important was a desire to better leverage MI and data in the business, with 67% saying it was very important and 31% saying it was important.
PwC said in its report: “Building a business case around expense reduction often seems easy, but long-term success requires careful management and tracking of benefit delivery and implementation milestones.”
It added: “Being clear on programme objectives, and how they link to individual investments, is vital. All too often, benefit delivery is decoupled from technology investment. Technology change should not become a goal in itself.”
Overall, PwC listed six key actions that carriers going through a technology deployment programme should undertake.
These were:
- Confirming the business strategy is informing the technology transformation.
- Setting clear and realistic objectives aligned to the business case for transformation.
- Setting an end-state technology design for the business.
- Aligning technology investment with cultural change programmes and hybrid working efforts.
- Combining new technology with improved and standardised business processes.
- Adopting Common Data Standards, starting with the Common Data Record.
The survey was conducted among senior management within the London Market, who were asked their opinions on the drivers, opportunities, and risks of technology investments. 19% of respondents were CEOs, 21% were CUO or active underwriters, 21% were COOs, and 27% were transformation, innovation, or strategy leaders.
