American entrepreneur Malcolm Forbes described variety as “the art of thinking independently together.” That artwork is endlessly being examined and tweaked inside Munich Re’s Digital Partners, which mixes one of the best of reinsurer, insurer, and insurtech experience to allow the evolution of insurance coverage experiences.
Digital Partners launched in 2016 as a standalone entity inside Munich Re. Digital Partners North America was blended into Munich Re Specialty Insurance (MRSI) in 2020, the place it continues to supply insurtechs and digital distributors with a complete, go-to market partnership for revolutionary insurance coverage experiences.
“We all bring different expertise and perspectives to the table. It is a good definition of diversity of thought when you get a reinsurer and an insurtech in the room together – and that’s important,” mentioned Courtney Hill (pictured), head of Digital Partners North America. “As the reinsurer, we’re very threat centric; we take into consideration issues when it comes to strains of enterprise, limits of capability, and limits on the coverage degree.
“Meanwhile, insurtechs are excellent at observing what customers want, and capturing that buying behavior in new ways. We see a lot of insurtechs going direct to consumer, and making plays on the embedded side, and I think there’s a lot of value there. These players are accessing customers at the point in which they actually need insurance, and they’re doing it through digital ecosystems.”
Digital Partners groups up with insurtechs, fintechs, scale-ups, disruptors, and mature firms to innovate and digitize insurance coverage alongside all the worth chain. It presents insurance coverage capability, product experience, knowledge, analytics, expertise, execution, and operational experience – however provided that each celebration is aligned on the worth proposition and is keen to collaborate and be taught collectively.
“We want to partner with folks that capture customers differently than the traditional market […] and who are capable of building technologies to digitally acquire and service customers,” mentioned Hill. “We wish to companion with of us who leverage knowledge past the normal market, and convey one thing to the desk, whether or not it is a advertising play or leveraging knowledge for score and underwriting.
“We additionally need our companions to rent insurance coverage leaders. That’s actually vital as a result of it helps us impart our learnings, and vice versa.
Optimizing collaboration
While Digital Partners has been profitable at merging among the greatest minds and concepts in reinsurance, insurance coverage, and insurtech, Hill believes the collaboration might be optimized. Reinsurers should put aside some features of their conventional method to enterprise, she mentioned, and insurtechs should leverage the years of insurance coverage expertise discovered of their conventional forebearers – regardless of making an attempt to rework or disrupt what they do.
“Collaboration is really about understanding what each other’s roles and responsibilities are,” Hill instructed Insurance Business. “What will we count on one another to carry to the desk? Insurtechs want to grasp that not all features of the worth chain might be dealt with by means of some kind of on-line equipment or on-line mechanism. Sometimes, you want folks, and people folks want expertise and experience.
“The best collaborations happen when we think about the entire insurance value chain. Insurtechs are great at understanding pain points, and they’re the experts on the customer. But their insurance partners are really great at understanding traditional insurance infrastructure like rate versioning and accounting. The optimal collaboration acknowledges everyone’s strengths and uses transparency to establish roles and responsibilities.”
Enhancing the client expertise
There is at all times a component of competitors in digitalization, however Hill doesn’t imagine insurtechs are impeding conventional gamers. Rather, she believes they’re enhancing the client expertise and giving clients a distinct manner to purchase insurance coverage – which ties again into the Digital Partners’ promise to ship revolutionary insurance coverage experiences.
“Insurtechs are capturing customers who want to buy online. They want digital experiences, but that does not entirely replace the need for an agent, a wholesaler or retailer,” she mentioned. “There will at all times be enterprise that should undergo these channels as a result of you may’t write them in a digital style – both we have not figured it out but, or possibly we now have chosen to not fully digitalize it as a result of there are too many handbook contact factors to make it environment friendly, and in some instances the client simply desires a non-digital expertise.
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t deploy digital efficiencies at certain pain points in the process; it just means that it doesn’t immediately all go online and cut out the agent. Even for folks that purchase online, a lot of them still want the option available to pick up the phone to make sure that they’re doing it right. In my opinion, insurtech and digital enablement does not replace an agent or the traditional distribution channels; it just enhances the customer experience.”
Beyond digital acquisition – which Hill believes insurtechs at the moment are “fantastic” at – the alternatives for insurtechs and digital distributors to rework insurance coverage experiences are infinite. The total insurtech ecosystem has exploded with distributors lately, particularly service and knowledge suppliers seeking to companion with insurtechs to resolve new ache factors.
Where Hill sees an incredible alternative for innovation is in claims, as she nonetheless sees too many cumbersome, handbook processes. She mentioned: “That’s the biggest gap in this digital value chain. How do we digitize and optimize the claim process more, making it more equivalent to the acquisition and servicing experience that these insurtechs are really good at?”
Digital Partners has developed over the previous six years, however its inherent worth proposition stays sturdy – to allow and companion with insurtechs and digital distributors. Hill added: “As part of MRSI, we’ve repositioned Digital Partners to have a more balanced top-line and bottom-line approach. Our pipeline is open, and we’re looking for partners with whom to work that fit within our value proposition.”
To be taught extra about Digital Partners, a Munich Re firm go to: https://www.munichre.com/digital-partners