When do you think your insurance company will complete its technology and digital transformation? The end of this year? Next year? Five to ten years from now?
How about never?
The thing about progress is that it keeps progressing. It might seem like there’s not much farther to go from our current perspective, but that’s an illusion. The digital transformation will never be over – and that’s a good thing.
The Digital Transformation Is Just Beginning
If you’ve been busy working on your company’s digital transformation, you might feel like you’ve made significant progress. You probably have – but there’s still a long way to go.
According to Property Casualty 360, panelists at a Reuters’ Future of Insurance event discussed how many insurers are just at the beginning of a technology renaissance.
The Goal Posts Keep Moving
Right now, you might be focusing on offering customer-friendly mobile tools. Or maybe you’re working on reducing fraud through better data analytics, or you’re refining your direct-to-consumer sales and telematics capabilities. Whatever your goals are, you hope to finish them soon.
Then what?
Well, then you’ll have another goal to work toward another goal.
Right now, it’s difficult, maybe even impossible, to say what that goal will be. A decade from now, you might be working on a technology that has yet to be imagined.
It’s not just the insurance industry. Take the evolution of the way we listen to music. We’ve gone from live music only to the radio and the phonograph, cassettes and CDs, and now streaming options. Who knows what we’ll be using 50 years from now? Technology is changing rapidly. It is impacting insurance the same way it’s affecting other aspects of life.
The Disruption of Progress
Sometimes, progress can be disruptive. Just ask anyone who’s still using a 3G phone.
As phone carriers focus on 5G, service for 3G phones is ending. According to The Verge, Verizon’s service for 3G phones and some 4G phones will end by December 31, 2022, while AT&T is shutting down its 3G network by February 22, 2022. Customers will have to get new phones by then. It’s not just phones, either. Other devices – including specific alarm systems – may also be disrupted. Some customers are unhappy with the news, and PC Magazine says that AT&T had to apologize for a confusing email sent out to warn customers of the coming change.
If you’ve ever updated your insurance company’s policy administration system, you know how difficult significant transitions like this can be. Even when everything goes smoothly, the process can still be overwhelming. Nevertheless, it’s essential.
Fortunately, at Insuresoft, we make the process easier with low code implementations and a solid commitment to expanding our R&D efforts. Our clients are risk-averse by nature but they understand the need to expand their technology footprint to better manage their relationships with customers and agents.
