#ThisMonday INSURANCE TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITIZATION: CAN IT BE MADE SIMPLE? By Ekerete Ola Gam-Ikon
#ThisMonday
INSURANCE TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITIZATION: CAN IT BE MADE SIMPLE?
By Ekerete Ola Gam-Ikon
Disclosure: I am neither a Techie nor a Digital Native, I am just an Online User of Data and Information to improve my knowledge of Strategy, Risk Management and Insurance!
That said, I decided to do this write-up to seek answers to the increasing concerns of insurance and non-insurance persons about the state of insurance in the emergent digital era.
A quick look at how the insurance industry in Nigeria has developed within the technology age reveals significant progress but digitization seems to make it look like the industry is about to start.
The sense of technology, as I experienced while working as an employee years ago, meant the replacement of typewriters with desktops, analogue phones with "speaker phones", meetings with conference calls and filing shelves with automatic filing systems.
Next came the attempt to have insurance software! Microsoft Excel served as the tool for those who knew to overwhelm those who did not know, and this went on to other aspects like presentation with MS PowerPoint up until the start of the new century, when we were told that all the data and information we had would disappear if we did not acquire systems that were compliant with the NEW MILLENNIUM!
Since Year 2000, the fear of technology has been the beginning of wisdom in business, but I guess the insurance industry, especially in Nigeria, is not easily harassed or rattled by what others are afraid of.
We would always remember the battles we survived, even if people died and companies folded up, to assure ourselves of continuous existence.
If the insurance industry in Nigeria survived the onslaught of technology, thanks to the involvement of banks during the near 10-year span of Universal Banking that allowed banks to own insurance companies, has anyone noticed that digitization is unlikely to "take prisoners" in the insurance industry?
Digitization, by my simple understanding, means machine and robots will be doing what you're doing; and when most of what you're doing are routinely in nature, persons with degrees become replaced by persons with skills.
Interestingly, insurance is a BUSINESS of numbers and lots of activities on the Insurance Value Chain are routines or not specific to insurance.
Except for Underwriting, Reinsurance and Claims, the other activities like Marketing/Sales, Customer Service, Financial Management and Investment can be borrowed or even outsourced.
How should insurance companies - insurers, brokers, reinsurers and loss adjusters look at digitization?
As I disclosed earlier, I am not a Techie or Tech Geek but I have an idea of what digitization is NOT:
• Having a presence on social media platforms;
• Telling a prospect who uses the Chatbot on your website that you'll call;
• Creating online forms or Word documents to get details from customers;
• Participating in virtual meetings and attending to customers until excuses set in; and
• Requesting customers to use your App or send emails when they still have to call and inform you of their actions.
Hopefully, as I continue to explore the tenets of digitization, I will be able to return with what digitization ACTUALLY IS and how it can be employed in the insurance industry to create value as businesses are meant to do and succeed.
Also, I have safely assumed that knowing what digitization is NOT will enable us repeatedly ask WHAT IT IS until we get it right.
Please feel free to enlighten and educate me on this subject matter and I will be quite happy to see the insurance industry in Nigeria seizing the opportunity digitization offers to leapfrog its "frenemies"!
I remain...
Assuredly Yours,
Ekerete Ola Gam-Ikon
NCRIB NAC Award Winner
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