Alan Walker poses a key challenge to leaders of insurance companies and three critical success factors to ensure that disruptive technologies need not be disruptive for insurance companies or their customers.
I am reminded of the value of insurance leaders like Paul Stanley FCII who combine the competence and expertise of insurance with the ability to exploit new technologies- now CEO at 360Globalnet
But the bigger challenge that I’m seeing is the problem of legacy culture. Insurers have survived for multiple decades, or even centuries, by acting a certain way. They have typically been risk averse, methodical and conservative. As a result, the insurers I’ve worked with have shared many of the following characteristics: They default to thinking of products, rather than customers, and inside-out rather than outside-in; They can be slow and ponderous, rather than nimble and agile; They don’t like to try something unless it’s guaranteed to be successful; They prefer to think incrementally, rather than strategically; and They’re more comfortable staying the way they are, rather than facing the challenge of change. None of these characteristics is going to help them in an increasingly fast-moving, customer-focused, digital world.
