During a recent panel discussion that formed part of Aon Virtual Reinsurance Renewal Season fireside chats, leaders from the industry identified real-time data management as a ‘game-changer’ for reinsurance
The session was hosted by Andy Marcell, Chief Executive Officer of Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions, and included as panelists Monica Cramér Manhem, President, International Reinsurance at SiriusPoint, and Tulsi Naidu, CEO, APAC at insurer Zurich.
The executives agreed that being technology-enabled was paramount to the future success of the re/insurance industry.
Naidu said that the “real understanding and appreciation” of insurance that had started to occur in parts of Asia over the past couple of years was partly due to an increasing number of technology solutions.
“One of the biggest opportunities for insurers is how we can use technology and data to bring insurance to life for our customers – whether this is in driving better customer experiences, building more engaging propositions, using insights to prevent crises or exploring new forward-thinking models,” she added.
Naidu said that technology and data would become “the spine” of businesses.
“This is probably the biggest topic for any CEO. Are we thinking hard enough about the direction of technology; are we thinking hard enough about the velocity of change?” she commented.
Speaking about the role of technology in the reinsurance sector, Cramér Manhem also remarked: “It’s the ability to use real-time data and to analyse risk which is going to be super, super important, and our industry needs to move quickly here, because we need to have that ability.”
“When you have the ability to bring in data and information and work it in real-time, it’s going to be a game-changer.”
Cramér Manhem noted that if submission data, policy information and exposure data could be managed in real-time, it would create “a dynamic that we haven’t seen before.”
In response to recent COVID-19 challenges and elements of customer dissatisfaction around policy wordings and coverage, Naidu said that communication was paramount, and that the industry needed to focus more on the product details and the claims process.
“We tend to focus on the concept of premium, and we just don’t spend sufficient time thinking and talking about the experience of that claim and the value of that claim,” she said.
Cramér Manhem agreed: “We bring tremendous value and support to society and our customers and I don’t think we’re necessarily the best at communicating it… what’s covered, what isn’t covered, what is the expectation, what is the intent and purpose of a contract or an agreement, [so] that it’s clear to both the customer and to the insurer, and ultimately to the reinsurer, as to what it is they’re providing coverage for and what are the expectations for the future.”
Cramér Manhem said that in recent years the industry had struggled to deliver “meaningful returns” in property businesses to shareholders, and needed to “remediate, reprice and repair” in order to be a “sustainable and viable proposition to our customers.”
