For the last five years, the insurance industry has experienced marginal growth in the European continent due to low-interest rates and complex products. However, the margins have slightly improved over the years and many more opportunities are expected to arise in the wake of individuals looking for their retirement savings and income, whether through life or pensions. Thus, insurers, today, need a concrete and future-proof plan in place that would prepare them for the fluid insurance market for years to come.
At the initial stage of their planning, insurtech firms must ensure to constantly modify and tailor their insurance services and products as per the customers’ demands. Insurtech companies/startups are assessing their current operational workflow and gradually adopting the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), big data, and more.
One of the imperative technologies revolutionizing insurance sector is AI by enabling an automated and personalized buying experience for the insured individuals. The use of chatbots powered by AI allows insurtech companies to extract and gather the customers’ demographic data to provide specially curated offers to each person. Similarly, IoT allows insurers to utilize real-time data and improve their business objectives such as revenue recovery and customer service. AI and IoT can even be coupled together to personalized data to pricing platforms, allowing drivers to pay less for vehicle insurance and people with healthier lifestyles to pay less for their health insurance.
Another technology making its way into the insurtech companies is big data analytics. With advancements in analytics and big data, insurers could extract a vast amount of data available in their system and leverage that information to gain a competitive edge in the market. Analytics further brings in a great opportunity for insurtech firms to make sense of unstructured data that come in different formats such as real-time video, social posts, and live blogging.
Even augmented reality (AR) is beginning to mark its presence in the insurance market. Use of AR in the insurance landscape includes raising risk alerts, explaining insurance plans remotely, estimating any potential damages beforehand, and increasing brand awareness. Additionally, the alternate forms of AR such as virtual reality (VR), mixed reality, and extended reality are entering the insurtech market and improving the overall AR experience for both the insurers and insured.
In the last few years, many similar developments have been recorded in the insurance market that is simplifying as well as bolstering the insurtech landscape for both the parties involved. To bring out more such transformative solutions available in the market within the reach of several insurtech firms, a distinguished panel comprising of CEOs, CIOs, VCs, and analysts along with the editorial panel of Insurance CIO Outlook has selected the Top 10 InsurTech Startups in Europe 2019. These start-ups, while in their nascent stage, are bringing in never-thought before strategies and innovative ideas on the surface to reshape the insurance industry.
We present to you Insurance CIO Outlook’s ‘Top 10 InsurTech Startups in UK 2019’