Last week in Chicago, senior executives from the insurance industry met to discuss emerging trends in technology and innovation during Balanced Growth Consulting’s inaugural Executive Roundtable. The meet-up brought together leaders from the life insurance and financial services sector and included executives from American Enterprise Group, Catholic Financial Life, Catholic United Financial, iPipeline, Modern Woodmen of America, Options Clearing Corporation and RGAx.
The two-day event took place at the beautiful Langham, Chicago and MATTER, an innovation incubator and accelerator located in the iconic Merchandise Mart. Langham, Chicago is the #3 hotel in the USA per US News & World Report and holds the exclusive Forbes 5-star distinction. The discussion revolved around the 4 major themes of vision and values, back-office hyper-efficiency, innovation movement and digital imperative and how each topic creates value for consumers and customers.
Jerry Lyphout, EVP of Modern Woodmen of America, shared a shift in the way they are planning for the life insurance industry of the future. “Our near-term priority is to become more efficient as an enterprise and move from a transactional-centric organization to an organization that focuses on customer engagement. People are living longer and we need to help them live healthier lives.”
Attendees noted the trend toward complex value chain innovations involving partnerships between mature industry participants and new, emerging technology players. Companies are developing separate business entities to pursue innovative business models which can bring new products and process improvements to market more quickly.
AI and the potential for dramatic shifts to the underwriting process driven by data intelligence also stood out for their potential to up-end the status quo. Participants shared innovations in business analytics through data warehousing in the Cloud, accelerated underwriting opportunities based on behavior patterns, and incubator-style innovation centers designed to help carriers test-drive new product configurations.
Of the opportunities for value creation, Eric Rea, EVP of iPipeline, observed “We are now at a stage where the risk of not doing something is greater than the risk of pursuing change”.
Balanced Growth Consulting specializes in strategic and operational innovation. We create enduring value for our clients by enhancing customer experiences, achieving operational efficiency, and generating new sources of revenue. In collaboration with client leaders and teams, we design, implement, and accelerate high-impact operational, technology, and innovation initiatives.
