Policy administration in the cloud
Compiled by Insurance24
HARARE, The move towards the cloud has seen insurers rethink their approach to not only solution development but also policy administration. Increasingly, ‘as a service’ is becoming pervasive in the industry. Claudette Steynberg, product manager at SilverBridge, takes a closer look.
“Despite initial scepticism around the benefits (and longevity) of the cloud, insurers the world over are seeing the benefits of transitioning – cost-savings, being less reliant on physical infrastructure, speed to market, the list goes on. An integral part of this entails analysing data effectively to make informed business decisions. As a result, an insurer can optimise service delivery including the effective management of policies,” she says.
Being more agile
One of the most significant advantages of being on the cloud, is how it empowers the insurer to more rapidly deploy solutions. Having access to data across devices, irrespective of physical location, means the insurer can leverage its agents in the field far more effectively by providing them with the most up-to-date information regarding pricing, policies, and the like. In turn, the agents can get a more accurate feel for their customers as the data they capture can help inform future solution development.
“Customer expectations in the digital world are all about instant gratification and on-demand experiences. Thanks to the connected nature of our lives, people are more aware of competitive solutions and have become less brand loyal. They are as likely to move to a competitor because of a pricing differential as they are to stay with their current insurer if a good value-add is provided. This places the insurer under tremendous pressure to continually innovate and find more effective and efficient ways to administer policies.”
Using policy administration systems in the cloud, or across a hybrid public-private cloud model, is a way to drive this competitive advantage. It provides the insurer with a degree of agility that would not have been possible when using purely on-premise solutions.
“Of course, this is where access to accurate data comes in. By being able to integrate data from numerous input channels (think social media, agents in the field, contact centres, and so on), analyse it for trends and behaviour, and applying those learnings to policy development and administration, an insurer can be quicker to respond to market conditions.”
Changing behaviour
Policy administration as a service might not be touted as much as it should, but being able to simplify insurance systems with flexible, rules-based administration can make a significant difference to the business bottom-line.
For example, we completed an implementation at a Zimbabwean insurer migrating its individual life and group businesses to a cloud platform. Doing so provided staff with the ability to access critical information irrespective of their physical locations and saved the insurer on infrastructure costs and software upgrades as the platform scales according to its growth needs.
“Aside from the business benefits, using a cloud-based solution also provides the insurer with a single view of the risk exposure of its clients. Being able to access all the information of one client in a central (online) repository makes for more effective operations.”
Silverbridge
AXA taps SecurityScorecard as ‘pioneering partner’ for cyber success
By Insurance24
HARARE,Cyber insurance is in a transformative phase. As businesses of all types and sizes slowly wake up to the serious potential of cybersecurity threats, more and more are turning to their insurers for cyber risk transfer and mitigation advice.
Despite growing awareness of the risk, cyber insurance as a product is still very new. It’s difficult for underwriters to assess and quantify cyber risk because they don’t have access to the same amount of data they use to underwrite more traditional P&C policies.
Furthermore, it’s important to note that awareness doesn’t necessarily equate to understanding. Businesses are aware of cyber as a threat because they’ve read news articles about the Equifax data breach or the WannaCry ransomware – but not all are aware of how that cybersecurity threat relates to their business or what they need to do to become more cyber secure.
Global security ratings firm SecurityScorecard has created a platform that quantifies cyber risk and rates companies’ security structures on an easy to understand A-F scale. The firm continually monitors over 200,000 businesses across the world and provides security analytics to help businesses manage their risk.
SecurityScorecard was recently selected by global insurer AXA to provide security ratings as part of the underwriting process for AXA’s rapidly growing cybersecurity business. The platform will provide AXA’s underwriters with an overall risk rating and detailed view into the cyberhealth of their insureds, which should help underwriters determine insurability, as well as to evaluate premiums for new policies and renewals.
“From an insurance perspective, it’s still very difficult to assess the risk of cyber. Underwriters need data for the underwriting and pricing process, but in the new and emerging cyber space that data hasn’t always been easily accessible,” said Scott Sayce, global chief underwriting officer of cyber at AXA.
“Our partnership with SecurityScorecard is going to help us better understand cyber risk. The processing and scoring capabilities of the SecurityScorecard platform combined with the expertise of our underwriters is going to be a key asset in terms of differentiation in the cyber insurance market. It will also enable AXA to establish more of a consultative position with insureds, where we can help them to assess and mitigate their cybersecurity risks.”
The SecurityScorecard platform comes with an easy to understand rating scale. A company that scores a D-F is 5.4 times more likely to be breached than a company that rates as an A or a B. The firm has been running its rating technology for four and a half years and has therefore collected enough data to confirm whether ratings are accurate and make probabilistic inferences about a company’s exposure. Logic dictates that if SecurityScorecard picks up a cyber vulnerability within a company, then bad actors will be quick to spot them too.
“AXA and SecurityScorecard are pioneering the cyber insurance industry. It’s a privilege to work with such a visionary brand,” said Aleksandr Yampolskiy, CEO and co-founder at SecurityScorecard. “This partnership demonstrates the value of our platform and the trust top business leaders have in our score. Our vision is to create a ubiquitous language for cybersecurity that facilitates collaboration and communication between business partners.”
InsuranceBusinessAmerica
