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Harnessing the power of data in insurance

22.03.2022

The insurance industry is facing two major shifts. Technology-driven digital disruption is accompanied by more demanding customers who expect highly personalized offers and new services. At the same time, the insurance sector is becoming increasingly regulated with a focus on the new IFRS 17 directives. Let’s look at how insurance companies can use new technology to solve the challenges they face.

The Deloitte study reveals, that “this industry may have less time to transform than it realizes. If insurance executives are measuring their progress in the journey towards digital transformation against their industry peers, they are likely using the wrong benchmark. The change will come from other sectors – and soon.” ¹

If there is one thing insurers have never lacked, it’s data. This allowed them to be very specific at calculating risk, determine how to handle an incoming claim and so much more. Later on, as more insurance customers started interacting online, the volume of available data grew exponentially. In addition, new kinds of data started to emerge from various devices and sensors.

Forward-thinking leaders embracing the power of the cloud

As good as that may sound, it has sometimes proven to be more of a disadvantage than a blessing. When you have a lot of data, data silos can quickly become the norm, and that clutter then becomes a commonplace obstacle on the road to becoming an agile service provider, which is what today’s customers demand. Numerous applications support different business areas – non-life, life, health, CRM, billing, policy, and claim management systems are separated. This separation is an additional challenge that requires bridging to unify all data under a common source of truth.

Perhaps it is this abundance of data that has caused insurers to be slower than other industries when it comes to monetizing this powerful asset.  As cloud computing, AI, and analytics technologies evolved, many struggled to keep up. They lagged behind other industries in terms of investment in and adoption of analytics, while the bar for gaining a competitive advantage using data was kept getting raised.

But things haven’t been bleak for everyone. Forward-thinking leaders in the insurance industry are those who are embracing the power of the cloud and looking for ways to create data-driven businesses. They are realizing the potential of new and powerful analytics technologies that allows them to leverage all their data in ways they had not even considered before. And the best thing – they didn’t need to break the bank to do it. Their workloads didn’t slow down because of heavier loads and real-time analytics – on the contrary.

A platform that takes the insurance industry to new levels

The one platform that takes the insurance industry to new levels is Snowflake Data Cloud. This modern core system supports insurers’ needs and all of their processes, interactions, and workflows. As customers’ data comes in all shapes (structured and semi-structured and unstructured format) and sizes it handles multi-structured data, elastic data processing, and storage. Snowflake can deliver insights in real-time with zero downtime. Introducing a centralized data platform helps all users to find the right information and allows easier collaboration which means the most valuable information is at people’s fingertips throughout the organization. This supports the development of a more holistic 360° approach in answering questions like how to service a customer, how to create personalized offers and prevent churns, as well as allowing more in-depth analysis and predictions of frauds.

The solution to the industry’s challenges

And we are only scratching the surface here. In our new whitepaper, we explain how to harness the potential of data so you too can become one of the forward-thinking leaders of the industry. In addition, we explain how the insurance industry can face a more innovative and successful future with the help of data analytics and all the potential cloud has to offer.

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