The INSURTECH Book

InsurTechs – Magical Thinking and Other Secrets of Success

By Neil Thomson

Strategic Sales Director, Freelance InsurTech Consultant

Much has been written about the disruptive threat of InsurTech and how traditional insurance as we know it will come to an abrupt end. I don’t believe this to be true, in fact I think the opposite. I see InsurTechs mixing it up with insurers, producing some very exciting opportunities. Insurance has never been better and the future of insurance is looking very good! But, is this really the case? Can InsurTechs and the traditional insurer thrive together, be stronger together, grow together? This chapter explores the InsurTech vs. insurer relationship from a different perspective, and discusses the wide spectrum of opportunities that can be driven out of this collaboration. Using shared experience and learnings, barriers to innovation can be overcome to deliver better customer propositions.

The development of InsurTech continues to accelerate at a pace and the impact on insurance and wider communities is now a global phenomenon. Although InsurTech doesn’t have an official birth certificate as such, the term InsurTech is thought to have been first used in July 2015.¹ This means we can successfully date InsurTech at the time of writing as being just over two years old. It may feel that InsurTech has been around for a long time but it’s only just blown the candles out on its second birthday cake! We refer to humans just over two years old as “preschool ...