How Actionable Insights are Transforming the P&C Insurance Industry

Digital transformation is a necessity for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry. As technologies such as machine learning, mobile applications, and telematics work their way into daily operations, the massive volume of data being created is driving a renewed interest among P&Cs in escalating their analytic capabilities. But are these organizations going about it in a way that delivers real business results?

In The P&Cs Path to Pervasive Digital: Why the Way You Deliver Analytics Is as Important as the Analytics Themselves, Digital Insurance reports that many P&Cs are taking a tactical approach to analytics — adding capabilities ad hoc for one or two specific use cases at a time — instead of thinking holistically. Not only is this approach inefficient, but it comes loaded with costs and risks.

Why Tactical Approaches Aren’t Working

The authors affirm that while an “initial toe-in-the-water approach was perfectly understandable as a starting point,” now it’s actually slowing down P&Cs’ progress towards digital transformation, for a number of reasons:

• Too slow to market: Each analytics solution requires its own planning process for data intake, processes, visualization, scale, compliance, etc., all of which slows down delivery to the business.
• Insufficiently iterative and agile: Implementing one-off analytics solutions is rarely a “once and done” undertaking, with each platform requiring frequent refreshes, reconfigurations, and accommodation of new data sources.
• High cost: As the authors point out, P&Cs must “procure, deploy, configure, integrate, and maintain the diverse technology components of the end-to-end analytics solution for each business use-case,” driving up budgetary spending.
• High risk: Most P&C companies lack the expertise required to manage the risks involved in implementing new analytics capabilities. The risk of technical glitches, cost overruns, compliance failures, and any number of other problems “create significant downside exposure for P&Cs that aggressively attempt to achieve a high level of analytic excellence on their own.”

Why an Analytics Platform-as-a-Service Is the Solution

If fragmented, one-off analytics solutions are the problem, what is the solution? As the authors point out, it’s pretty simple:

“Instead of cobbling together disparate software and hardware components into an excessively complex, fragmented, and costly-to-own internally deployed environment, P&Cs must instead obtain their integrated analytics capabilities on demand from the cloud.”

By seeking out analytics-as-a-service from a provider who can deliver a full spectrum of capabilities, P&Cs can realize a series of compelling advantages, including

• Immediate access to greater analytic capabilities then they could ever have achieved on their own
• Confidence in their long-term technological competitiveness
• Big savings on both the capex and opex sides
• Optimized performance and scalability
• Access to the deep data science expertise that’s rarely found in P&C companies

In today’s fast-paced, hyper-competitive environment, P&Cs can no longer afford to take a “homegrown,” ad hoc approach to meeting their need for analytics. Instead, they should focus on their core business, and rely on a trustworthy technology partner to deliver the analytical tools that will take their organizations into the future.

Download your complimentary copy of The P&Cs Path to Pervasive Digital: Why the Way You Deliver Analytics Is as Important as the Analytics Themselves.