This relative calm is no longer on the agenda. The advent of the digital era has triggered today a fear within the business which is multiplying conferences and debates on this topic.
Leaving aside the technological discourse, the fundamental problem for insurers today is the loss of the first contact with policyholders who are snatched by large groups capable of getting hold of business and therefore imposing their conditions.
From the perspective of a fully digital society, the balance of power is inevitably shifting to benefit the traders of new technologies that will not hesitate to impose their vision. They have the ability to capture customers, to the detriment of insurers, identify their risk, and manage them.
Thanks to bar codes and to other sensors, new automated services can assess, free of charge, continuously and in real time, the value of a home, and calculate a motor or a health premium,…
In this context, insurers have no other alternative but to propose their own ideas of the future. Their lack of anticipation of the digital switchover in their trade is going to cost them very dearly.
It is up to them to figure out and impose on commercial sites electronic solutions capable of guiding in real time the customers to their services, and thus escaping from the forced partnerships and the diktats that digital giants are bound to impose.
In the absence of a long-term vision based on coherent actions, insurers are inevitably set to end up working for others who are much more visionary than them.