Ryan Kim, Group Chief Digital Officer at FWD Group, speaking on a panel at this year’s Singapore Fintech Festival, notes that insurers are focusing on technologies such as AI and blockchain. “The technology maturity is there,” he says. “Especially through this pandemic situation, many insurtech companies are in a very favourable position, and many insurance companies’ digitalization plans are accelerating faster.”
Even before the pandemic, some traditional insurers, over the past few years, were starting to transform and digitalize in a quest for more customized and efficient services, and many tech vendors were embedding new technologies into the industry. Dropin, the US-based tech company specializing in video insurance claims processing, is one example. Using technologies such as drones, the company enables the quick capture of evidence and the fast assessment of damages. Some disruptive newcomers like China’s ZA Insure and US-based Lemonade even intend to provide full-stack digitalized insurance services.
“Nowadays, we are seeing more and more insurtech companies packaging new technology components into one holistic solution and providing that to the sector,” says Arijit Chakraborty, managing director for Asia at Cover Genius, during the panel discussion.
The industry’s US success stories will likely start happening in Southeast Asia soon, predicts panellist Shawn Lau, vice-president, partnership solutions, at Swiss Re, whose previous experience at Grab has given him first-hand exposure to some of the great technology coming soon to the region.
“We see the likes of full-stack insurtech companies like China’s ZA Insure and Thailand’s Sunday, trying to shake the industry up with their visions and plans, and walking the talk by implementing solutions that have never ever been talked about, much less implemented by traditional players themselves,” Lau says, adding that tradition players, just by testing these new solutions, are move faster in their digitalization journey.
Chakraborty notes that, overall, insurtech is still at its beginning stage and various forms of insurtech companies have different growth potentials. He also believes that, similar to the banking sector, traditional players and tech companies in the insurance space should focus more on collaboration than competition.
FWD’s Kim agrees, suggesting that “the insurtech companies and the traditional players can now work together to form an ecosystem where we can provide additional value to customers”.
Source: The Asset
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