The INSURTECH Book

The Future of Insurance – From Managing Policies to Managing Risks

By Dr J.H.F. Onno Bloemers

Head of Insurance Transformation, Delta Capita

The End of the Current Model

The classical insurance business model, with insurers offering financial compensation or stability to clients through a contract represented by a policy, is under attack.

Today’s customers expect seamlessly-working digital solutions across more and more aspects of their lives, as well as in many of their dealings with insurance companies. Both convenience and relevance are essential in today’s competitive environment, where new business and architectural standards are dictated by rapidly-evolving technologies and rapidly-crumbling industry boundaries.

Insurers struggle to respond to these ever-increasing expectations. Often quoted reasons for this struggle are the increase in regulatory pressures, which is absorbing a large part of available change capacity within incumbent organizations. And, of course, it doesn’t help either that many insurers still run on a myriad of legacy applications. Obviously, these circumstances form important, difficult, and very real obstacles, but there might be a more fundamental reason for the difficulties insurers face with organizational transformation and innovation.

On this more fundamental level – and notwithstanding the drive and energy of the countless insurance professionals I’ve met over the years – it seems that incumbent insurance organizations do not hold all the ...