The INSURTECH Book

A Four-Step Practical Guide to Build InsurTech Value Chain Ecosystems

By Dr Ivan Gruer

Associate Manager, Accenture, Technology

“Corporates have now wholesale outsourced R&D to the startup and venture community” is what Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups, claimed at the CB Insights’¹ 2017 Innovation Summit. However, since more than 550,000 new startup businesses were established on average per month² in 2016, how could they support R&D developments within insurance companies and deliver significant value chain improvements?

This chapter intends to support the design of insurance value chains ecosystems that are valuable for both consumers and insurers, as well as to other key stakeholders relevant within the insurance value chain.

The InsurTech landscape is getting wider and wider where each InsurTech fixes a specific issue across the insurance value chain. With this four-step practical guide we intend to describe ways to identify and develop value chain improvements and then new business models by combining InsurTechs that leverage IoT, wearables, and blockchain capabilities.

To develop effective InsurTech value chain ecosystems, an organization needs to consider the following four steps:

1. Conduct startup-storming.
2. Organize startups’ themes using the Kawakita Jiro method.
3. Scout for relevant solution(s) using the Quality Function Development matrix.
4. Select the right solution.

We will review each step in turn to identify those startups that may be the most relevant for ...