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Compendium

Digital disruption in insurance: Cutting through the noise

Back to Our Insights
Compendium

Digital disruption in insurance: Cutting through the noise

Digital insurance in 2018: Driving real impact with digital and analytics

Highlights from articles this year show the progress that has been made in reinventing the insurance landscape—and suggest more disruption to come.
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What's New

Blog Post

Burning questions from InsureTech Connect 2018: 48 hours at the world’s largest insurtech gathering
– Seven major questions answered on how investors’ favor can translate into more innovation.
Article

How traditional insurance carriers can disrupt through personalized marketing
– Last year, our colleagues in the Marketing and Sales Practice published a piece on personalized marketing. We have adapted the... framework they presented to the insurance industry.
Video

The rise of ecosystems and platforms: What role can insurers play and how can they get started?
– In this video, McKinsey senior partner Johannes-Tobias Lorenz introduces the concept of digital ecosystems and discusses the roles... insurers can play in them.

I. Digital strategy

Blog Post

The five trends driving insurtech, live from DIA 2018
– At the Digital Insurance Agenda, insurtechs and leading players in the insurance world demonstrated ways they can partner to... better serve their customers.
Blog Post

How insurers can get the most out of a digital transformation in 2018
– For insurers leading the sector in the race to digitize, 2018 is the year to upgrade investment and ecosystem strategies, maximize... data-based value, and acquire the IT talent to better serve business goals.
Blog Post

What the new world of insurance could look like
– From a customer’s standpoint, few industries are as ripe for disruption as insurance.
Article

A strategy for a digital age
– Few insurers have defined a comprehensive digital strategy fit to withstand attackers at the gate. The starting point is to understand... the sources of disruption.
Article

Insurtech—the threat that inspires
– Incumbents need to keep their eyes out for new entrants that use technology to create a strategic advantage. The size of their... share in the next generation of the insurance industry is at stake.

II. Digital value capture

Blog Post

How smart insurers convert digital customers at six times the rate of their peers
– It’s not just about the demographics. Insurers often point to the age and income of their customer base to explain their struggles... with digital marketing, especially their generally low rate of success in converting online visits into actual policy sales.
Article

The age of innovation
– Insurers have a choice: be disrupted or be the disruptor with new products, services, and business models.
Article

Capturing value from the core
– Insurers’ existing customers, brands, data, and technical skills are valuable business assets if they can be catapulted... into the digital age.
Article

Partnerships, scale, and speed: The hallmarks of a successful IoT strategy
– The Internet of Things both promises to enhance and threatens to undermine insurers’ business models. A three-pronged strategy... is needed to secure its benefits.

III. Digital capabilities

Interview

Automation at scale is driving transformative change across insurance
– Advances in robotics, cognition, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are ushering in a new era of automation. Machines... can now match or outperform humans across a range of activities in a number of industries, including insurance.
Interview

An insurer’s journey to better customer experience: A conversation with Allianz’s Firuzan Iscan
– The customer-experience leader at Allianz describes how the German insurer is learning to view customer journeys from an outside-in... perspective.
Article

Intelligent process automation: The engine at the core of the next-generation operating model
– Full intelligent process automation comprises five key technologies. Here’s how to use them to enhance productivity and... efficiency, reduce operational risks, and improve customer experiences.
Article

Modernizing IT for a strategic role
– IT has long been seen as a cost of doing business by insurance companies. In a digital era, it must be modernized and recast as... a strategic one.
Article

The promise of blockchain
– Blockchain has huge potential to enhance insurers’ business model, but is also being used by digital start-ups to attack... it. Hence the imperative for incumbents to start exploring this nascent technology.
Article

The advance of analytics
– Harnessing the potential of burgeoning data and computer power to add value must become ingrained in insurers’ every activity.

IV. Digital culture, talent & organization

Article

Building momentum for cultural change

– Being told to abandon old ways of thinking and working and embrace without delay a new, and seemingly riskier, digital culture can be unnerving for insurance companies. But there are certain actions insurers can take to kick-start change while minimizing the risks—and they do not have to alter everything at the same pace.

V. Digital transformation roadmap

Article

A roadmap for a digital transformation

– No insurance company has yet completed a digital transformation—one that fully harnesses the power of digital technology to rethink every aspect of the organization. But a number of carriers are making remarkable progress, indicating the direction others should take.

More resources

Q&A With Industry Leaders

Caught on Video—Thought Leader Insights

How companies become digital leaders

About this compendium

What does success look like for an insurer in a digital world, and how is it achieved?

This compendium helps paint that picture by drawing on McKinsey’s experience in the industry and that of some 30 executives whom we interviewed. We hope it will help executives to understand where value lies in a digital world, at the same time as offering a clear, practical approach for capturing it.
Senior Partner

Tanguy Catlin
Works with major financial institutions, and leads McKinsey’s Digital Quotient initiative—helping companies rapidly... gauge and strengthen their digital capabilities to improve financial performance
Senior Partner

Johannes-Tobias Lorenz
Works with major insurance and banking institutions to build digital strategies and transform the customer-service experience,... driving success in an increasingly digital market

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