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Is Insurtech Making Any Difference?

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I have a great interest in technology and the impact it is having and has had on all our lives over the past 30 years or so since I first worked inside Microsoft and saw first hand how growth and sales in a new sector worked and impacted the lives of millions of individuals and businesses globally.

This interest has again been peaked with the up coming CES Expo and a direct comparison with where the insurance industry is after decade or more of investment in InsurTech.

I am left wondering how the tech CEO’s and investors going to CES this year would feel about their efforts and investment if CES was all about InsurTech? But they are not and as an example in net-connected home market grew 24% in unit terms in 2019 according to IDC.

The comparative insurance industry figures can best be described as FLAT and has been over the last decade or so.

The ‘Advanced’ growth figures which include USA, Europe etc remain at slow growth rates – and this is premiums NOT unit sales – looking at the unit sales and its an even more interesting picture – taking life insurance as an example.

Life insurance is losing its appeal in the U.S. In 1965, Americans purchased 27 million policies, individually or through employers. In 2016, a population that was more than 50 percent larger still bought only 27 million policies.

This is a huge drop in sales since the late 1990’s and again FLAT sales despite all the InsuTech investment and companies started over the past 20 years – although the peak for new start-ups in this area has fallen off in the last few years.

This leads me to think that InsurTech is totally focused on the wrong area and has been ineffective – looking at investment in Customer Acquisition – this can only be seen as totally ineffective – no growth – just moving a customer from one carrier to another.

I think that the success of the InsurTech revolution should be more focused on smarter and more relevant insurance products – and the key measure being the growth in people buying insurance not only in the USA but globally.

Advertising insurance is HUGE in the USA (as most developed countries) – GEICO alone spends over $1billion per year, the top 10 companies spend over $5billion. They have been doing this for years too!! Most of this money is spent year on year on a bunch of adverts which are mainly focused on jokes or promoting fear or saying how boring insurance is.

My question is why would you want to buy a product that is promoted by a liar – Pinocchio.

This $5 Billion dwarfs the investment in tech and yet still sales are flat.

As an industry shouldn’t we be more focused on growing and serving our customer base, adding new customers with smart, easy to use, and understandable products that are relevant and useful?

How is MIC Global responding?

Our insurance products are new and innovative. How do we know this? Because today we have found it very hard to impossible to get the traditional insurance markets to support our vision for new products and growth. They prefer to look backwards.

Our model of integrated and embedded products into our client platforms and operations is new. Our insurance products back client service operations that will enable our business can scale through this and our tech.

Our vision fully supports our clients growth ambitions by limiting the impact of our services on their processes, whilst delivering essential insurance cover for their customers.

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